.hack//Legend Of Twilight Bracelet Fan Fiction ❯ ManEating Orchid ❯ Chapter One- Purple Mountain Majesty ( Chapter 2 )

Chapter One - Purple Mountain Majesty

 

August 30, 2003

 

A grumbling sound came from under the off-white comforters. The glass on the floor, from the window broken by the alarm clock, reflected sunlight and created a rainbow all around the walls of the room.

 

"Five more minutes. No one is going to miss me in the high school."

 

When nothing happened, no mother came barreling through the door with pancakes, no dad shouting while strapping on his mechanics overalls for work, and no sister was standing at the door way, laughing at mom and dad's futile attempts to wake the dead daughter, Anissa sat up and pulled the covers off of her head.

 

"Oh no," she muttered, worried what this irregular behavior might mean. "What's going to happen now," she groaned, burying her face in her soft, feather-filled pillow.

 

An indeterminate amount of time passed before Anissa worked up the strength and courage to venture out of her room after getting dressed with her Capri's, boots and black band t-shirt making up her attire, and called down the hall to see if anyone was home.

 

"Mom? Dad?" her voice rang out unsure, her footsteps making soft light thuds on the hardwood floor. "Alyssa? Is anyone up, or even here?"

 

No answer.

 

Anissa walked into the kitchen, noting absently in her head that the burner was on and pancake mix was sitting untouched on the counter. She jumped when shouting interrupted the awkward silence and went outside.

 

Alyssa was yelling at her mom and dad, hands moving around wildly in animated frustration and panic. She looked like she normally did. So did her parents. Anissa looked back and forth between her parents and sister, confused as she didn't understand what they were saying, they were too loud and too fast. She had just woken up. She couldn't keep up. She couldn't comprehend that her sister was trying to win a fight that she could only lose.

 

She didn't know that she wouldn't see her sister for three months right after the next morning...

 

Her sister was leaving the state...

 

(-)

 

Anissa skipped the first day of school for only one true reason. She was too busy crying. Her sister, Alyssa, was going to boarding school. Their parents were tired of Alyssa altogether. They wanted her to learn 'manners' away from where she could drive away and do what she wanted. They wanted her where she had to wear a uniform and if she disobeyed, a stick was put to her ass as punishment and warning.

 

In other words...

 

A penitentiary or juvenile school of some sort.

 

Even father, the one who'd stuck up for her on more occasions than Anissa could count, thought it was a was a good idea; that it would teach Alyssa to have a better sense of the world, better communication skills. Daddy's girl was getting sent away by dad.

 

It was so not fair.

 

Alyssa got nearly the top grades of her classes, rarely ever did anything to the teachers or students (and was caught - Alyssa never got caught unless someone she worked with ratted on her). Alyssa always had the nicest boyfriends (that never seemed to work out because they were too nice) and never did drugs. Ever.

 

So why was she the one being sent off? Wasn't Anissa the more reckless on, that thought taking paint and throwing it all over the gym walls at their old school was fun, and the one who'd gotten off - scott-free because her sister came in and deliberately dunked her hands in paint to take the blame herself?

 

By all rights, I should be leaving... I'm the crazy one.

 

Anissa climbed off her bed, wiped the tears off her face and walked out of her room. She really needed dad to unpack her guitar. Screaming random words and making them into a random, senseless song was very appealing to Anissa at that moment.

 

Blinking, Anissa stared in front of her, at the top of the stairs to her basement, and watched her sister sit cross-legged on the practicing mat on the floor. The brunt of her hands were on her forehead and her fingers were weaved through her hair, fanning out and around her face mysteriously. She didn't hear any crying, and doubt highly that her sister was crying anyways. Alyssa was just sighing loudly and swallowing loudly enough for Anissa to hear.

 

"Nissi, what am I gonna do?"

 

Alyssa looked up and saw that Alyssa was gritting her teeth with her mouth closed. She'd been so upset, thinking how it wasn't going to be the same without Alyssa, and she'd forgotten that Alyssa would be going someplace completely foreign to her.

 

"You aren't going to go. That's what you are going to do," Anissa snapped. "They can't make you. You don't have to go to a school by yourself, in another city, where you don't know what the people are like, what they will do to you."

 

"But Nissa," Alyssa interrupted, "I can't disobey them this time. They said that if I don't go willingly, I'll have to stay there for I don't know how long. Mom said that there is a possibility I might stay there for more than a year, if I don't behave."

 

"But... they can't do that! They can't just stop you from seeing mom and dad and me for over a year!"

 

"They can... and they are."

 

Anissa scoffed and whimpered at the oddness of Alyssa's personality. She still could not let the idea of Alyssa giving in sink in. It just wasn't possible. She spent the next five minutes staring at her sister in the silence when finally...

 

"I'm leaving tomorrow morning, Nissi."

 

Hell broke loose.

 

It was a bare whisper. But Anissa heard it as clear as if she had been shouting.

 

"WHAT?! NO!" Anissa wasn't breathing at this point already, a devastated cry evident in her voice whenever she spoke. "This is not fair! They can't take you away on such short notice!"

 

"It wasn't short notice. It was final two weeks ago. Mom and dad planned on moving here and making me go to the boarding school."

 

Anissa's eyes went wide. The fiends... to their own daughter...

 

"Mother fucking... -- MOM!"

 

-(-)-

 

Anissa rolled down the sidewalk slowly, staring at the ground intently, past her black concert t-shirt and her black Capri's. She was on her way to school. Alone. No one was going to be there to keep her company, make her feel like she was safe, that she wasn't an outcast to be hurt or kidnapped. No one to make her feel like she was cared for.

 

It had rained the night before, keeping Anissa up through-out the entire night, sitting in Alyssa's room, playing cards to pass the time. It was one of her quirks. She never went to their parents room as a child, she always went to her sister's because when they were young, they slept in the same room and Alyssa was always nearer. So naturally, she still went to her sister when the thunder seemed to roll around.

 

If it weren't for the fact that she was completely alone, Anissa would have sat down and fallen asleep. But she kept moving, lifting one foot and pushing herself forward... nothing motivational about anything around her.

 

Life is a bitch, she thought...

 

And so is mom.

 

Anissa glanced over her shoulder, hearing the sound of plastic wheels on pavement aside from hers and wondering whether the one she met up with would be friend, foe, or uncaring.

 

With the way she was feeling, she didn't which one she would rather it be. Friend, for someone to trust, foe to let anger out on, or uncaring so she could be left alone to sort everything out herself.

 

It was a boy, half a foot taller, on a skateboard. He had brown hair messily brushed and a simple punk outfit on; a dark green shirt with camouflage pants and black boots. He was very cute. At least, to Anissa, he was.

 

But he was familiar.

 

It was the same teenage boy she and Alyssa had ran after awhile ago, upon the first day of their arrival. Anissa scowled angrily.

 

This boy had ruined her chance at starting off freshly without being labeled something she didn't want to be.

 

The awkwardness she felt already was his fault.

 

"YOU!" she shrieked, whirling around and suddenly feeling wide awake.

 

He shot his head up to look at her and lost his balance, the skateboard moving out from under his feet. Blinking, he focused his attention on Anissa and yelled, "Who the hell are you? Why did you do that for?!"

 

"You made me and my sister chase you for ten blocks because you planted effing rock hard muffins on us!"

 

The boy in front of her stared dumbly, not quite comprehending what she said. Or so it seemed... "What are you talking about?" his voice clueless, and dumbfounded. In a way, it was cute to Anissa.

 

"When we moved in," she said louder than before, saying the words with careful precision, "you brought over muffins, saying they were from your mother, but they weren't muffins, they were rocks or something hard."

 

"I gave you muffins... but they weren't muffins..." he murmured, pausing to think about what she said. "What?"

 

"Oh, my gosh!"

 

All of a sudden, the boy grinned, standing up. "They were made out of brown cement that is light. I thought the way all of you looked at the muffin was funny. Especially your sister's. She looked like she was amused instead of outraged by the prank."

 

Anissa gaped at the boy. He was outright admitting that he had given them the muffins, saying how he did it, and talking about how their faces looked. "Are you-"

 

"Oh, by the way, my name's Shugo, not 'you'," he smiled.

 

"Shugo?" she repeated, not quite believing how nice he was being to her.

 

"Um, ya, Shugo." After a second of her staring, he took a step back. "Are you ok?"

 

"Fine, just fine. My day is going great, just great. I just met you, the one who pranked us for the first time in awhile, and you didn't turn out to be half-bad at all."

 

Shugo just raised one eyebrow and turned his head to the side a bit. "Um... ok? Is that good?"

 

"Lovely," she muttered, turning around and returning to her path to school.

 

Shugo blinked then ran to catch up to her, throwing down his skateboard he reached her side. "I told you my name, care to tell me what yours is?" he asked, avoiding a rather large crack in the side-walk and veering toward Anissa brushing his upper arm with her shoulder.

 

"Anissa, Anissa Nagoya." She looked down at her shoulder when his arm brushed her sleeve and shivered at the way her flesh burned at his touch.

 

He must have seen her shudder because then he chuckled. "Have you lived by the equator all your life or something? Because its around seventy degrees right now and nothing to be cold about."

 

Anissa was starting to be freaked out at the way he seemed to like to talk. But maybe that was just her and the way she was starting like him. "No, its... well, I kinda have. Everywhere that would be cold in this time of year, it wasn't till the summer that I've lived. I'm kinda creeped out about this place because this is the least urban place I have ever lived. Supposedly, this is my birth-place."

 

Shugo raised an eyebrow at the word 'supposedly'. "Why do you say supposedly?"

 

"Because I don't believe my parents. If my sister told me this was where I was born, then I'd believe her."

 

Shugo looked Anissa, wide-eyed and confused. "Why your sister?"

 

"Because she's never lied to me, she's always told the truth. She's never kept anything from me or sugar-coated things to make things better than they are. She's the most honest person I've ever known," Anissa stated simply.

 

"Oh. Okay, that's cool, I wish my sister wasn't like that. She tells everyone, everything. Last year, in the last week of school, she told everyone that when I was five, I used to walk up and down the streets, screaming 'damn' because I learned it at school from some third grader and I was so proud."

 

......

 

Anissa started laughing loudly, covering her mouth with her hand, after a moment of contemplating what he said.

 

"Oh, my god! Did you really?" Anissa giggled, feeling more like the girlish fourteen-year-old she was.

 

"Yeah, I really did. My mom and dad... taped the whole thing. They thought it was funny by horrific at the same time. I didn't get to watch my favorite TV show for a month. It killed me but at least I'm not a happy-go-lucky bunny freak who hops whenever they see something fuzzy or whatever."

 

"Uh huh, I'm sure you don't."

 

Shugo rolled his eyes but sighed amusedly. "Trust me, I don't. But anyways... what grade you going into?"

 

"Blah. I'm a freshman," she replied, sticking out her tongue disgustedly. When Shugo didn't say anything, she became worried. Was he disappointed that he was in the same grade or that they weren't?

 

"Ninth grade?" he asked, assuming that's what she meant after a few seconds.

 

"Yeah, it sucks, but at least its not my senior year or anything. I have time to... get acquainted, as mom put it. Why does high school have to be so... big of a popularity contest?"

 

"No clue. Ask the ones at the top. And speaking of high school. Look where we are," Shugo dead-panned with a grin on his face.

 

"Shugo!"

 

Anissa turned from looking over at Shugo and his grin to a girl with the same hair only longer and the same face, only feminine. It looked as if the girl was not a prep or a punk. Or goth, for that matter. Just normal. Blue jeans and a blue t-shirt, the words 'Killer or Kisser?' written in fancy, yet mysterious letters.

 

"Hey, Ren--"

 

"You're late! I know you said to not wake you up but see what happens? You get here only five minutes before we have to start school! Tengaki, Shuyin, Jackie, and Jami are looking all over for you! When they find out you were being lazy and flirting with some girl they don't know, they are going to kick your ass!"

 

"I wasn't flirting! She's the new kid, so I just walked with her to school!"

 

"Uh huh, and Katie 'The school bitch' Allman isn't at the top of the popularity chain."

 

Anissa blinked several times then let out a confused, "huh?" Bending down, she listened to them.

 

"Who's Katie?" she asked, standing up and crossing her arms. She had changed out of her roller blades and put on some black vans while listening to what they said.

 

"A prep who's athletic and likes to shove it in people's faces," Rena answered absently. Opening her mouth to yell at Shugo some more, she realized she didn't know who the new girl was. "Uh, what's your name?"

 

Anissa blinked then opened her mouth. "My-"

 

"Don't tell me. Wait until everyone else gets over here so you don't have to say it twenty-billion times."

 

Anissa shrugged her shoulders, then sent a wary look to Shugo. He merely grinned back then his jaw dropped slightly.

 

Before Anissa could do anything about it except scream, two hands were on her shoulders and and a girl leap-frogged over her.

 

"Oh yeah! New record! Thirty-nine people before school even started! WOO! What!" the girl whooped, raising her hands in the air with her fingers symboling 'rock on'. After a second of jumping, what seemed, three feet in the air and high-fiving Rena, she whirled around, grinning widely like it what the only way her mouth would go. "Thanks for the contribution!" Standing an inch or two taller than Anissa, she was wearing baggy pants, and a black slipknot shirt on. Dark chocolate skin, even darker hair cut short in the back and spiked with long bangs reaching down past her nose. Sex-bracelets reached up both her arms and her finger-nails were painted black and red, almost professionally.

 

"No problem, but a warning would have been great. I wouldn't have screamed."

 

"Element of surprise, my dear friend," she informed, her voice changing from the hyper, out-of-control teenage, high-school girl to a sophisticated, English -woman. "If I had told her, it would not have been nearly as fun." She looked up at Rena who was unable to breathe then started laughing herself. "In other words, if I told you, it wouldn't be funny!" she managed to say before her knees started to give in and she stumbled around, head hung low and shoulders shaking.

 

"The hell...?" Anissa murmured, staring at the girl as if she was some crazed, hyper-active, hysterical alien that couldn't stop laughing.

 

"Jackie, when did you go to bed?" Rena shrieked between short spurts of laughter.

 

The girl laughing, now known as Jackie, stood up straight and turned around, all in one fluid step and motion, holding one finger up as if she had just gotten an idea. "Exactly four o' clock in the morning! Yesterday!"

 

"Oh no," Shugo moaned amusedly, shaking his head. "We'll never hear the end of her until she has Mrs. Artkrass for History."

 

"That's bad? I think she's funny.

 

"Wait until third period goes by. She'll be laughing so hard, mostly at herself and what goes on in her head, that she won't be able to say anything, it'll be just laughing."

 

At the moment Shugo stopped speaking, a mechanical tone rang out through the air and the front grounds of the school, signaling to all that first period was in less than ten minutes and a scream echoed through-out the air a second after.

 

Jackie had screamed, eyes-wide and hands open, up by her face. "Oh, my god, its the sound of our DOOM! No!" Jackie started running around in a small circle, arms out-stretched as if pushing something forward.

 

She never stopped until a pair of boys came up to her and picked her up, one grabbing her legs and the other slipping his arms under hers.

 

"How many weeks will it take for her to stop doing the 'DOOM' thing this year?" one with platinum blond hair laughed, eyes wide in disbelief. "It took her two months last year and I started screaming too cause she screamed and scared me!"

 

"Hee hee," Jackie laughed, tears at the edge of her eyes finally. "It's fun! Nobody does, so I'm left with the job, Tengaki!"

 

"There is no job, Jackie!" This time, the black-haired boy spoke, wearing regular semi-baggy jeans and a gray t-shirt.

 

"I know! I made it up! Duh! Geez, why are you so brain-dead, Shuyin?" Jackie teased, kicking one of her feet and disrupting the balance Shuyin and Tengaki had, dropping to the ground on her arse. "Dammit! Ow!"

 

Tengaki and Shuyin exchanged laughing looks. "We're sorry, Jackie. It was an 'accident'."

 

"'Accident my ass!"