Don't You Have a Mission To Get To?

In all fairness in KH3 Xemnas does say that he used to trust Axel to "deal" with traitors

I don’t really think that can be taken at face value though based just generally on how Xemnas treats the Organization members on the whole. He also spends a lot of time calling them his “friends” to their faces while manipulating and using them behind their backs. The context is important, and the context of Xemnas saying that is that he’s trying to taunt and hurt Lea while he has Lea at his mercy.

To me that scene comes across as Xemnas twisting the situations where Axel was working for Saix (C.O.) and when he forced Axel to go after his friends (neither of whom he was able to kill) into something he was doing for Xemnas personally. Xemnas doesn’t like his potential vessels having individuality or motives that don’t have to do with him, so the best way to hurt Lea is to turn things done for his friends into something done actually in service to Xemnas. It remains a fact that the only people Axel actually personally killed were Vexen and Zexion, both of whom Xemnas wanted alive.

(Reposting from my personal since Tumblr has APPARENTLY decided my 7-year-old personal blog is a bot and won’t put my posts in the tags :) :) :) 

Original post )

So okay, it seems like a thing that people genuinely think Axel had an actual job in the Organization as an assassin for Xemnas and that is just straight up not at all supported by canon even a little bit. Especially this concept that there were previous Org members that he eliminated before CoM?? Like that just straight up did not happen.

1) We know from kh3 that Xemnas personally hand-picked the entire Organization. Members 1-8 were all Apprentices and Isa and Lea had connections to the Keyblade War via Skuld and Ventus. Members 9-12 were also hand chosen for their connection to the Keyblade War. Roxas and Xion were both there also for their connection to the Keyblade. There is absolutely no evidence any other members ever existed. Even if you were to take Xion’s fear of being turned into a Dusk as a real thing Xemnas might do, that still implies Xemnas would have taken care of unwanted or useless members himself rather than outsource it.

2) Axel has never been called an assassin in canon. Marluxia is the one with assassin in his title, not Axel.

3) The cutscene between Axel and Saix in Days before Axel goes to CoM makes it clear that it’s Saix’s order for Axel to go on this mission, not Xemnas’s. Saix at first says that it’s orders from the top but Axel’s response highlights that Saix is the one making the call. It could have been anyone; Xaldin would have been happy to do it based on his later argument that Xion should be eliminated when she runs away, but Axel was chosen because Saix was in charge of assigning personnel and Saix wanted to eliminate Zexion (confirmed in one of the prior Ultimanias).

Axel has no pre-existing role as an assassin and being able to assign him this job is the payoff of Saix’s rise to power. Saix wouldn’t have had to become the second in command to put Axel at Castle Oblivion if Axel would have been sent anyway by Xemnas.

4) Axel was also sent after Roxas because of his personal connection to Roxas and Sora, not because it was his job. Saix sending him to Castle Oblivion was what put Axel on the position of having a connection to the Keyblade, which Xemnas found useful once it had already happened. Axel was also the one who would have been most motivated to get Roxas back alive and stop him from going back to Sora. It had nothing to do with a job title.

5) Axel doesn’t even behave like an assassin. He’s secretive with Saix and he’s sneaky about Zexion but his tactics are too blatant to be called assassination. He kills Vexen against Xemnas’s wishes right in front of witnesses. At Castle Oblivion he mostly lets Riku and Sora do all the work and then cleans up after they’ve done the heavy lifting, but that’s mostly just to cover up what he does for Saix. It’s still incredibly obvious (Xigbar outright says in a journal entry that Axel was obviously working for Saix during that whole debacle, and Xemnas has a journal entry about how he was not planning to lose Vexen yet), but his connection to Sora makes Axel too valuable to punish yet.

There’s no evidence that Axel has ever killed anyone before Castle Oblivion. If anything, the Organization seems like it was mostly doing research for ten years while Xemnas set up the game board for when the Keyblade reappeared. Sure, Evil Coffee Boy is less cool and edgy than assassin but there’s a lot more evidence for the latter than the former.

By all means I’m not saying don’t have fun. There’s a lot of fun to be had with the idea of a darker version of the history and what ifs ands aus. My point is just that, in current canon, there’s no evidence for it. Any meta or theorizing that comes from the assumption that Axel has a job as an assassin is inherently flawed because that’s just not supported by the text.

I've been replaying Days thinking a lot recently about Nobodies and emotions and their choices and in light of Kh3, I think the way that Nobodies are perceived to be experiencing emotions needs some rethinking.

Plenty of words have been devoted already to the fact that Axel's choices in Days are pretty selfish and self-serving, but to be honest Axel isn't unusually selfish in comparison to any of the other Nobodies other than Roxas and Xion. All the Nobodies exhibit self-interested emotions while showing a complete inability to comprehend selfless ones. I submit that the main problem of Nobodihood isn't inability to feel any emotion, but an inability to connect on a metaphysical level to others. The fact that exposure to Sora has an instant effect on the Nobodies reinforces this idea, since Sora is repeatedly referred to as 'the connection.' His unique ability is to forge connections between others, and it's this ability that causes the Nobodies to start becoming more human.

Consider the other Nobodies. All of them are callous to others around them, but they all have a sense of self-preservation. Almost all of them show fear and distress at the prospect of fading, and they all have self-interested goals they obsessively work towards to the detriment of others. Vexen, Zexion, Demyx, and Larxene all show fear as they fade, while Saix shows despair and Xemnas and Marluxia show rage. Zexion and Vexen are clearly capable of contempt when training Roxas, Demyx manipulates others for self-interested reasons (to get out of dangerous, tiring work), the list goes on. Saix even assumes that when Roxas is upset about Xion being unconscious, it's for self-interested reasons, and assures Roxas that he doesn't have to worry about his standing being affected by Xion's failure. No one is even that put out by Saix and Axel eliminating half the team; obviously they would, as it's in their interests. There's a general assumption that really, everyone is out for themselves.

Saix and Axel are an interesting case in that their self-driven motivations are trying to chase connections they once had but can no longer feel. Both of them are like this; that's how they stick together so long, and why they act on one another's behalf even when it's not actively advantageous for themselves as individuals. Axel kills for Saix, Saix protects Xion for Axel even despite his contempt for her (there's no way he didn't realize something was going on with the Keyblade, and he covered for Xion running away for 24 hours to give Axel time to retrieve her).

The problem comes in when exposure to 'the connection' causes Axel to begin to connect again, but not to Saix. He can feel connections again to the other aspects of Sora, but he's still a Nobody, and thus still driven by animal self-interest. He expresses that self-interest by abandoning his pact with Saix to chase the high of connection. Saix, in turn, reverts to a Nobody's basic default and protects himself individually, first by trying to essentially repossess Axel and then by destroying him to protect Saix's own standing. Interestingly Axel, who's reforged connections, is the only Nobody who isn't sad or angry or frightened to die.

KH3 makes it clear this selfishness is a Nobody thing; most of the recompleted Somebodies are horrified by their behavior as Nobodies, down to Vexen, who was stated by Nomura in an interview to be even more evil than Xemnas. Saix, whose most selfish, dying wish was to regain his own heart, immediately decides to risk his own renewed existence to bring back the person he most blamed for losing Axel. Even gives up his humanity to help with that goal. Ienzo immediately joins up with the same Lights he previously taunted and disdained to help them defeat the very Organization he originally worked with. Lea throws himself at joining the Keybearers. Even Demyx can be convinced to do something extremely dangerous for no personal gain. Their brief returns to humanity are enough to reforge 'connection,' and allow themselves to see the impact on others of their actions.

𝐛𝐚𝐬𝐢𝐜𝐬 !

FULL NAME.      Isa/Saix PRONUNCIATION.      EYE-zah/SIGH-icks  NICKNAME.       The Luna Diviner  GENDER.         Male-ish. He would call himself a man if asked but he doesn’t have any strong attachment to or concept of his gender as ‘male.’ HEIGHT.      5′6″ . AGE.    15 (BBS) / 25 (Days) / 27 (KH3). SPOKEN LANGUAGES.   Japanese (but obvs I’m writing in English).

𝐩𝐡𝐲𝐬𝐢𝐜𝐚𝐥 𝐜𝐡𝐚𝐫𝐚𝐜𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐢𝐬𝐭𝐢𝐜𝐬 !

HAIR COLOR.       Powder blue EYE COLOR.        Originally greenish blue (kind of a teal), then gold as a Nort, then a blue a bit closer to green than previously BODY TYPE.        Endomorph ACCENT.         Formal VOICE.          Smooth, generally quiet but firm unless he’s angry, in which case his voice is booming. Not too deep but not too high DOMINANT HAND.         Right POSTURE.        Very stiff most of the time. He relaxes a bit after the Organization, but his standing posture is still very shoulders-back-and-chest-out. He tends to keep his chin tucked to guard his neck. When sitting, he’s generally inclined to lean forward. TATTOOS.         None BIRTHMARKS.         None MOST NOTICEABLE FEATURE(S).       Giant honking scar in the middle of his goddamn face, long luxurious blue hair.

𝐜𝐡𝐢𝐥𝐝𝐡𝐨𝐨𝐝 !

PLACE OF BIRTH.        Radiant Garden HOMETOWN.        Radiant Garden BIRTH WEIGHT.        Average BIRTH HEIGHT.         Average MANNER OF BIRTH.      Rough. His mother had a hard time with him. Modern medical intervention made it easier than it could have otherwise been but it was still rough.  FIRST WORDS.         “No.” SIBLINGS.        None PARENTS.    Sabina (mother),  Albertus (actual father), ???? (Man Isa thought was his father, idk I haven’t thought enough about him to name him lol) PARENTAL INVOLVEMENT.    Isa came from a very high-class, very distant and cold family where there was very little affection but also very little conflict as long as everyone played their public roles properly. Isa’s parents have a frigid marriage of convenience for the sake of status and propriety (Isa is not aware of the fact that his mother’s husband is not actually his father). Feelings were generally not discussed. Lea was the only outlet Isa had for much affection; tolerating Isa’s running about with Lea was the concession allowed to him given Isa’s excellent grades and general visible success. Once Radiant Garden fell, Saix had very little ability to miss them, but might not have missed them much anyway. 

𝐚𝐝𝐮𝐥𝐭 𝐥𝐢𝐟𝐞 !

OCCUPATION.      Odd jobs. After spending way too long as the middle manager in an evil cult, Isa these days mostly works with his hands, helping to build and restore the parts of Radiant Garden that still need help. He also helps cull Heartless for munny drops. CURRENT RESIDENCE.       He splits time between Radiant Garden and Twilight Town CLOSE FRIENDS.       Lea, Subject X in his youth, Roxas and Xion post-kh3  RELATIONSHIP STATUS.      Perpetual something with Lea. They will definitely get married eventually.   FINANCIAL STATUS.    He was wealthy as a child, as an adult he can easily make comfortable-living money fighting Heartless and he doesn’t look for much more than that.  DRIVER’S LICENSE.   None, he can however pilot a gummi ship. CRIMINAL RECORD.       OH BOY....Ex-Organization so he has plenty of skeletons in his closet, though he doesn’t have an official on-paper record past "Former Organization XIII Second in Command.”

𝐬𝐞𝐱 & 𝐫𝐨𝐦𝐚𝐧𝐜𝐞 !

SEXUAL ORIENTATION.      Demi-sexual to gray-ace ROMANTIC ORIENTATION.        Homoromantic but tbh Lea-romantic PREFERRED EMOTIONAL ROLE.       Equal PREFERRED SEXUAL ROLE.       Equal leaning dominant LIBIDO.         Very low. Outside the context of attraction to Lea specifically, he has zero libido. In the context of attraction to Lea and dependent on the verse, libido varies. TURN ON’S.       Lea being turned on, affection, danger also? Him and Lea narrowly avoiding disaster is definitely an aphrodisiac. Also his ears are weirdly sensitive. TURN OFF’S.      Not being Lea, disrespect, anything that seems even remotely like his partner isn’t into it, degradation or actual harshness LOVE LANGUAGE.   Acts of service. Isa is not good with expressing his feelings, he’s not big on touch and not huge on possessions, but he will stick his neck way out for people he cares about. He shows his affection by doing favors for people and anticipating their needs. RELATIONSHIP TENDENCIES.       EXTREMELY monogamous. 

𝐦𝐢𝐬𝐜𝐞𝐥𝐥𝐚𝐧𝐞𝐨𝐮𝐬 !

CHARACTER’S THEME SONG.      Cosmic Love, Florence and the Machine HOBBIES TO PASS TIME.   Reading, exercise,  but honestly he keeps himself busy finding work to do wherever he can find work to do. He doesn’t know how to relax.   MENTAL ILLNESSES.  Autistic spectrum, post traumatic stress disorder. PHYSICAL ILLNESSES.      None LEFT OR RIGHT BRAINED.       Right PHOBIAS.   Canon-based Isa really doesn’t have any phobias. SELF CONFIDENCE LEVEL.    Historically really high (to a fault), but it’s taken a hit since that whole Xehanort thing. VULNERABILITIES.   Blinded by pride, emotionally distant and constipated, bad liar

@divinerxeclipsed liked for a small starter !

“Hey, Sai-…Isa, I want to ask you something.” It still felt weird addressing th =is man by his new name. Roxas was trying very hard to see him as a new person rather than his old boss. “Do you think that we can try to be friends now?”

Erf, that name. Hearing even the beginning of it was never pleasant, but Isa recognized it was unavoidable. It was big of Roxas to make the effort to correct himself. If there were any people in all the worlds with a right to still call him Saix, it was Roxas and Xion. Isa inclined his head.

The humor leaves and Demyx actually manages to look serious. “I know. He didn’t need you for vessels, he needed you to die.” A mix of conflicting emotions appear on Demyx’s face before he looks away. “You guys all died, again. And I hid like always.“ 

...Huh. Did Demyx actually feel guilty about that? Isa shifted his stance, looking Demyx over in an evaluating kind of way. Evidently there was more than met the eye to most of the former Nobodies. He huffed out a breath, relenting.

"Pineapple on pizza is the ideal melding of salty and sweet in an actual meal."

Lea: Yeah, no way this can go wrong!

SEVERAL DAYS LATER:

Saix:

Axel:

"Did I tell anyone to do anything? I was simply making an observation about the volume of uncouth language."