Home World :: Radiant Garden
* Birth by Sleep *First sighted in Hollow Bastion with his friend Isa, Lea quickly challenges and befriends Ventus. After the battle, Lea tries to cheer up his newfound friend. Before leaving, he tells Ventus that their friendship will bring them together again some day.
Lea and Isa proceed to try and infiltrate Hollow Bastion's Castle. After being thrown out by Dilan, the Castle Guard, Lea buys them both Sea Salt Ice Cream.
* The In-Between *At some point overlapping the end of Birth by Sleep and the beginning of 358/2 days, Lea and Isa successfully break into Ansem's Castle. In the Computer Room it's revealed that Xehanort is unlocking hearts in order to create twelve Empty Vessels to house the fragments of his heart. Lea's heart is removed and his Nobody, Axel, was born.
He becomes Number Eight of the reclusive Organization Thirteen, and together with Isa's Nobody, Saix, plans for the collection of their lost Hearts.
* Chain of Memories * In Chain of Memories he plays as the double agent. As such he gains the trust of the rebels Larxene and Marluxia just so that he can get in on their plans. He is so meticulous in pretending to be on their side that he goes to the extent of destroying one of the Organization's own, Vexen, upon command. However, after gaining their trust and learning of their plans to take over the Organization, he exposes them to the rest of the Organization as traitors and has them killed, by creative means, upon confrontation with Sora.
From there, he granted Namine freedom from the Organization's clutches so that she could show Sora the truth about how she manipulated his memories.
In addition to these blatant and meticulous accusations of murder, he attempted to enroll the aid of Vexen’s Riku Replica in order to eliminate Zexion, another member of the Organization, from Castle Oblivion’s lower floors.
* 358/2 Days *When Roxas was first initiated into the Organization, it was Axel's charge to show him the ropes. At first, the Flurry is unsure of how to help such a clueless, zombie-like initiate, but over time and Ice Cream, things seem to alleviate, and Axel even begins to form a bond with his smaller blonde cohort.
He is sent to Castle Oblivion during Xion's initiation, and thus doesn't initially get to know her. When he finally returns from his mission at Castle Oblivion (and after the deceptive downfall of many of his cohorts, as eluded to in Chain of Memories), he's under the impression that his place as Roxas's "best friend" has been usurped by Xion.
At Roxas's request, the three of them begin to bond over Ice Cream and memories in Twilight Town, just as Roxas and Axel originally had... Despite the fact that Axel, all the while, is well aware of the faux shadow Xion really is.
Being a creature of opportunity, Axel continues to work within both sides of the Organization. Due to his unique position, he is able to maintain decent standing with most of the internally divided gang, all the while trying with every fiber of his being to keep his small, three-person family together.
Through his tangled web of carefully-fabricated deceit, Axel's only true desire is to keep his friendship trio together. The younger, restless Nobodies continue to make holding their group together more difficult by the moment. And to add insult to injury, Axel catches wind of a new plan formed by Xemnas, their leader, to eliminate one of the two Keyblade Wielders.
When Xion tries to leave the Organization once she discovers what she really is, Axel forcefully takes her back, convinced he can, somehow, keep their trio together. Axel's desperate and rough outburst toward Xion adversely breaks his speaking terms with Roxas, and he becomes divided himself, trying to figure out some median to keep both of them alive, and rapidly running out of time.Once Roxas discovers that Axel's been keeping Xion's identity a secret, he brashly decides to leave the Organization, despite Axel's admonition that the gang would destroy him for doing just that.
And, Axel, as is the story of his life, is divided once again. But this time, it doesn't take him long to settle on a decision. Fully aware of the consequences, he jumps on the defection bandwagon, choosing the bond of friendship over his loyalty to the Organization. So when Roxas leaves the Organization to seek out his Somebody, Axel makes sure he isn’t far behind.
* Kingdom Hearts 2 *When Roxas finds himself in Diz’s imitation of Twilight Town, Axel is the one to play the Hero and, in one last attempt to save what's left of his Nobody-family, he tries to save his remaining best friend.
Roxas, however, chooses to merge with Sora regardless of his best friend’s desires, but The Flurry doesn’t give up hope, and decides to take matters into his own hands. It’s at this point he takes Kairi as his captive in order to lure Sora (or moreover, what’s left of Roxas) to himself, but his plan gets derailed when Saix obtains Kairi for the Organization’s bidding.
His final memory of confrontation with Sora is in the Betwixt and Between - a gray area between worlds on the pathway to World that Never Was. In this passage way, he decides to help Sora (and the Best Friend he knows is locked away in there) fight off an alarming amount of Dusks, even to his own bittersweet end.
With fading strength, he opens a portal to the World that Never Was, allowing Sora, the enduring legacy of his best friend, an all-access pass into the next phase of his destiny.
* World Destiny (Pre-DDD) *After a re-awakening (the science behind which remains anyone's guess), Axel returns as his Nobody to fill his position as Number Eight of the Organization Thirteen - all of whom have been re-assembled by forces unknown.
The re-organized Organization is anything but organized. Missions are scattered, and there seems little purpose to their gathering beside the very loose goal of regaining their hearts. Even so, many of the members splinter into sub-groups, devising their own plans and walking similar paths to those that lead to their first demise.
Despite this, much of Axel's rebirth as a Nobody is spent looking for Roxas and the rest of his old friends. After all, he made them a promise to 'always bring them back'. It's a large expectation to meet, and it winds up being a goal he only gotten close to completing
once.
Most of Axel's time as a re-assembled Nobody can be found in his Journal. The only other tidbit of import in his story takes place when Organization Thirteen teams up and launches an all-out attack on Destiny Islands in hopes of taking the world's Heart for themselves.
The raid would claim many of its participants. The mark of Darkness would be placed, but it would be long before its effects would be fully realized. After all, it was only a passing storm.
It is in this raid that Axel's Nobody is destroyed a second time. However, his essence would live on.
* Dream Drop Distance *Upon awakening as his completed Somebody, the first thought to cross Lea's mind is of his friend Roxas, reminding him of the promise he made them: that he would always be there to bring both he and Xion back.
He realizes after seeing his reflection, and the lack of the marks adorning his cheeks, that he and several of his cohorts have become their Somebody selves again. He takes note that Braig and Isa are missing.
Later he explains to Aeleus and Ienzo that he will go look for their missing cohorts, seeming both to proclaim a self-assigned obligation to find them and equally to despise 'the icky jobs'
He goes on to save Mickey and Minnie from Pete and Maleficent by recklessly traversing the darkness and opening a portal to get to them. From here, he heads to Yen Sid's tower and requests training to become a Keyblade Wielder.
Despite Yen Sid's warning of danger, the fire element, true to his nature, jumps in with both feet in an accelerated crash course with Merlin and the Three Good Faeries.
Driven by his own moral compass, Lea proceeds from here to the place Where Nothing Gathers in order to save Sora from Xehanort's evil plan to use him as a vessel. He is confronted by Isa: a friend he was unable to save from becoming one of Xehanort's vessels. However, the friend he can still save, he does.
In the safety of the Mysterious Tower, Lea offers to help Riku should he fall to the darkness again, and takes a back-seat, watching and waiting for Riku to enter Sora's heart and return him to consciousness.
Once they both return to consciousness, Lea shocks the room when he tries to summon his keyblade in jest, and this time it appears.
The redhead proceeds to check on things in Radiant Garden, and this is the last we see of him.
* World Destiny, Pre-Nightfall *Little had anyone realized that the raid upon Destiny Islands had sewn seeds that would eventually swallow the world in Darkness. It would become the first world torn asunder in the terror of the Nightfall.
