Rurouni Kenshin Fan Fiction ❯ Oiran no Gaijin - "The Foreign Courtesan" ❯ Moon Book ( Prologue )

[ Y - Young Adult: Not suitable for readers under 16 ]

"Ashley, wait up!" called a chipper voice. Its owner was juggling a heavy purse, an even heavier bookbag, a thick binder, and a homemade art portfolio and was still managing to run close to full tilt after her friend. "Ashley, come on! Don't just walk off and leave me!"

Ashley didn't answer - she just continued walking, hoping the idiot would just go away and leave her alone. However, she had no such luck and she knew it too. Her best friend for going on fourteen years was crazed in the morning and crabby in the afternoons. That was just the way things were. The brownish/blonde-haired girl blew the ever-recalcitrant lock of hair out of her face, held on to her binder just a little bit tighter and hitched up her bookbag. Unfortunately, this pause gave the piece of disturbance behind her a chance to catch up. She could clearly hear her friend's Birkenstocks scraping along the pavement. Rolling her eyes and heaving a tired sigh, Ashley turned around only to be almost knocked off her feet.

"Best friend!" squealed the auburn-haired girl with glasses, squeezing her irritated friend around the shoulders. "Come on! Best friend hug!"

"Nicole, go away," whined Ashley, shrugging her shoulders in an attempt to push her friend away. She just wanted to go to homeroom and sleep through announcements. "It's way too early in the morning for this!"

"But it's only..." began Nicole, looking at her wrist. "Crap! I never wear a watch! Hell if I know what time it is..."

Ashley shook her head and wondered why she had put up with this idiot for almost fourteen years. Then she smiled inwardly as she thought of exactly why she had put up with Nicole for going-on-fourteen years... Rolling her eyes, she dodged another one of Nicole's hugs and trudged into her homeroom. Nicole followed, singing the Sailor Moon theme song in Japanese. Ashley wanted to hit her for it, but like she had said, it was too early in the morning and she was just too damn tired.

I'll hit 'er later, she thought as she dropped her bookbag on the floor by her desk and set her binder and purse on top of the desk.

She slumped into the seat and folded her arms on the table part of it, hunching over and laying her head on her arms. Then she felt another sudden twinge of annoyance and the itching desire to throttle her best friend. Nicole was poking her repeatedly around the head and shoulders saying "Poke!" over and over. Ashley made a whiny "uh-uh" noise and shifted her head on her arms, as if trying to bury herself in the sleeves of her pea coat.

"Nicole! Go away!" she whined once more. "Go to your own homeroom or something, just leave me alone!"

Nicole pouted for a moment, then climbed over a few desks to get over where a couple of guys were playing paper football. One of them was just an immature nitwit who Nicole didn't particularly enjoy being around. The other was the guy she had "had it bad" for since the end of the sixth grade. It was sad really, since they were seniors now. Keith had just scored his sixth "touchdown" of the paper football game and was playfully ragging on his opponent.

"That was so not a touchdown," snapped Jarrett, pointing at the paper-and-tape "football" on the desk.

"It is too!" countered Keith.

Nicole calmly leaned over and put one finger beside the closest bit of the ball to the edge of the table. Besides just being around Keith, she had gotten rather into the game herself and had taken to refereeing it. This morning was no different. It made her feel good inside that Keith did not object to her presence. Using her abnormally long fingernails as miniature rulers, she ascertained that the shot had indeed not been a touchdown.

"Sorry Keith, not this time," she said apologetically, holding up her fingernail and pointing at it with the index fingernail of her other hand. "It was this far from the edge..."

"Damn," muttered Keith, though it was obvious he was not going to hold a grudge against Nicole for making the call in favor of the other guy.

It was always like that: Nicole followed Ashley to homeroom, annoyed the living hell out of her, then watched the boys play paper football and refereed until the warning bell rang. It rang at 7:55 like it always did and she jumped up. She grabbed her purse and hugged Keith in a hurry as she scampered out the door. The cold air stung her nose and ears as she sprinted across the campus, her black cape flapping uselessly around her knees. She threw the glass door open and sprinted inside. Her Birkenstocks flew off in her haste and she skidded down the rest of the hall in her socks and fell in a heap. People rolled their eyes and a few of them laughed at her entrance to homeroom. But that was just the way it happened in the mornings; Nicole was just doing what she always did.

~~ At Lunch ~~

Homeroom had been for the most part uneventful. The people on the announcements had no idea what they were doing and Nicole was sure she could do much better. First period, which happened to be chorus that day, was nothing special as usual. The boys wouldn't quiet down and listen to the teacher and she had so little control over the class that she couldn't very well make them. But that was nothing new. Art had been a fair example of a disaster, what with the idiots always looking over her shoulder or jolting her elbow on purpose. She could never get anything done like that. Problem solving had been a bitch that day; the not only was the problem insanely hard, but it took forever and no one was sure of the right answer. After that had been her AP psychology class, where she had been shown a video on eating disorders. She knew they were serious and that they were real diseases, but showing the video was a little on the side of overkill.

Jeez, she thought. Every time a girl goes on a diet, they think she's tryin' to kill herself!

Lunch revolved around second period, so that meant Nicole and first lunch, then a free period, then second lunch. She would be free for almost two hours! Those were two glorious hours that she could spend in the library. Nicole might not have been the best at getting her homework done on time, or at all, but she was smart and loved to read. So she tootled on back to the library and swept across the room like a storm with her cape billowing around her. With two hours to while away, she decided that maybe a nice thick book about pressing issues, like teens in court and women's rights would be about right. As she kicked off her shoes and settled in on her knees, she selected a book about crime and punishment. It wasn't about Japan, or else she couldn't have handled it. She already knew more than she wanted to about the legal system over there...

Well it's not like that's what it's like now, said the small portion of her brain that thought rationally.

Rational thought could kiss Nicole's royal ass for all she cared. She didn't trust legal systems, not after all that she knew had happened with innocent people being killed and the guilty walking free and taking government positions. Mumbling a few Japanese swear words, she adjusted her position and turned another page. This two-page spread was about Bonnie and Clyde. She didn't know why she was reading this book, but something about it just intrigued her. It wasn't that she approved of what they did, - far from it -, but something about bandits had always gotten to her. That turned her thoughts to the handsome bandit from Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon... Zhang Ziyi's character had been so mean to turn him out. Nicole smiled as she thought, I would have run away with him...

She shut the book about crime and punishment, bored with it, and stuck it back on the shelf in its proper place - the librarian was sort of OCD when it came to things like that. Her eyes drifted over the dust-jacketed spines of so many books that were probably older than she was. She was vacillating between the book about wizards and the book about magical creatures, only mildly interested, and was thinking about giving up altogether and heading for the fiction area. In fact, she would have, had she not seen the worn old book that lay flat beside the one about magical creatures.

The book was very old, probably older than the school that was over a hundred years old itself. There was no call number on the old leather spine and the book did not have a dust jacket. The title was hand-inscribed on the three-inch-wide spine, only it was in what appeared to be some kind of fictional language. Either that or it was in Latin... Nicole debated whether or not to take it to her English teacher and hope he could read it and decided against it. After all, what if it turned out to be something she really shouldn't be reading? Somehow, she had a feeling that this book did not belong to the library. Very, very carefully, she tried to edge the book off the shelf a little at time by pulling it with one finger.

"Yow!" yelped Nicole as the book seemed to throw itself forward and banged itself into her chest. "The freakin' book attacked me!"

Inside, she was rolling her eyes at herself.

Way to not draw attention to yourself, Eisenstein... she thought sardonically.

She really hadn't wanted to draw attention to herself and the strange book. People were staring at her as though she had done something very odd. Granted, she had... She had yelled in a library, something she would never normally do, she had apparently hurled herself backwards and almost knocked a shelf over, and she was breathing as if she had just given birth. All the chattering voices stopped as the angry librarian stormed over to Nicole, his face red and his toupee about to fall off. Nicole looked up at him with wide, frightened eyes. He had yelled at her once before and it had been scary.

"I'm sorry! I'm really sorry!" she cried, tears of embarrassment and fear welling up in her eyes. "I didn't mean to! I didn't mean to!"

"Get OUT!" roared the librarian, pointing his finger at the door.

Nicole looked down in frustration and shame and saw that she was clutching a... dictionary? How in the world had that happened? As the librarian repeated his command, she scrambled to get her purse and slip her shoes back on. Flustered and still acutely ashamed of herself, she slammed the dictionary down and ran crying from the library. Where could she go now? She didn't need anyone to see her crying because then they would ask questions. All she wanted was to pretend that the last ten minutes had never happened at all. Well, that wasn't going to happen. Everyone in the library would be running to tell their friends what Nicole Barrington, the school freak show, had done this time.

She couldn't talk to Ashley about it - certainly not. Ashley would just say she didn't want to hear about it and that Nicole had just brought it on herself. Nicole hiccuped and started to sob. Ashley was the best best friend anybody could ever have, but sometimes she could be an insensitive wart. Then again, so could Nicole. Feeling helpless, alone, and unloved, Nicole stumbled off to find a good place to cry. Finally, she settled on the area behind what used to be the Convent. It was almost wooded there and she needed to be close to animals and plants right now. She knew that Ashley would already know about what had happened, but what about her parents? Surely the school would call them about it... Then she would really be in for it. They had said if she got in trouble at school, it would be doubled at home.

Something hard and heavy fell on her hand and she swore out loud. Looking down through tear-smudged glasses, she saw the book again! The front of it was more interesting than the spine. On the cover was beautiful hand-done painting of the moon with a book in the center of it. The whole painting had a lavender tone to it, contrasting softly with the harsh brown leather binding. Not thinking clearly, Nicole opened the book and flipped through a couple of pages. The words were in English, but it appeared to be Middle English. She could read some of it and the rest she could guess at.

The book was a spell book. There were beautiful color paintings of the spells in action. The pictures didn't move like they did in Harry Potter, but the effect was quite as astonishing. The book's pages were caught by a sudden wind and flipped with a swishing noise until the wind died down. Nicole stared at what was in front of her. The pages had fallen open to what looked like a scrying spell. It called for something reflective that she could see into. Normally scrying was done with a crystal ball, but that was just nonsense. Wasn't it? She turned to a page marked "Hydromansie." Hydro-what? Oh! Hydromancy! She had heard of that, but had never tried it. The spell was called Seeing Ball.

"To calle up ye orbe fore seen, take thee Three Cups of Clear Water," she read aloud, stumbling a bit over the language that she was not used to. "And say ye These Wordes... 'I Invoke The Ancestral Sea Of Ar'iartunon!'."

A puddle by her foot moved a little bit. Could it really be responding to her spell?

"Be ye warned, Yonge Witch, fore this Spell, improperlee done, shall have Serious Repurcussiones," she read, her brow furrowing.

What was that all about? Eh, from what she had read in Harry Potter, assuming all this was real, the most that would happen would be her winding up looking a bit strange. Oh well, people already stared at her. She put the book in her lap and pointed dramatically at the puddle by her foot.

"I Invoke The Ancestral Sea Of Ar'iartunon!" she whispered, jabbing her finger at the puddle.

A bubble popped on the surface, but nothing of note happened. She tried again, this time a little louder. This time, a tiny drop of water rose up, separated itself from the rest of the water and hung suspended above the surface for a moment. Now thoroughly astounded, Nicole looked down at the book. She stared at the words and they stared back at her. This couldn't be real, she told herself. Could it? Her brows knitted together again and she stared hard at the small puddle. There certainly wasn't the equivalent of three cups there... So what would happen if she did it again? She took a deep breath, concentrated, and pointed her finger at the puddle once more.

"I Invoke The Ancestral Sea Of Ar'iartunon!" she said in a strong, clear voice.

For a moment, nothing happened. Swallowing hard, Nicole lowered her arm and looked around sheepishly to see if anyone had been watching. To her relief, no one else from her free period was around. Then she looked down... In the center of the puddle, there were ripples shimmering along the surface. The water pulled itself up off the ground and formed itself into a perfect crystalline sphere, rising to Nicole's eye level. For a long moment, the water orb just hung there, motionless. But then the surface of it started to vibrate. The earth shook as the water in the soil was pulled to Nicole's water ball, which was growing bigger and bigger. The emergency siren went off around the school and the teachers started to herd people out. It was nothing like a fire drill - this was pandemonium. Nicole closed her eyes and in a moment she was in the center of the campus, standing on a hill of bone-dry dirt with a water orb the size of a beach ball swelling before her. It started to rain, but not a drop hit the ground as they all went flying to Nicole's water orb. Students and teachers alike had stopped trying to abandon the campus and were crowding around to see what was going on.

"It's Nicole!" someone shouted. "She's doing it!"

"How can she do that!?" someone else demanded.

"I always knew she was an alien!" cried a science geek, rushing forward to take her picture.

The water ball shot out a tentacle of water and threw the boy bodily into the crowd, then withdrew back to its spherical body.

"NICOLE!" screamed Ashley. "WHAT ARE YOU DOING!?"

"I DIDN'T MEAN TO!" Nicole yelled back, bracing her arms in front of her as the orb swelled to the size of a large yoga ball.

People were screaming. Some were shouting at Nicole, berating her and abusing her. Some were shouting at each other about Nicole, pointing and telling the nearest person who would listen about what was happening. Some people threw things at her, but the objects were repelled by the tentacles produced by the orb. The ground stopped shaking. Someone realized that Nicole's water ball had sucked the entire campus grounds and a few nearby yards dry. The rain was still rushing into the ball, which was now the size of a small car. Finally, sucked dry as the earth, the clouds disappeared from above the campus.

"What made it stop?" someone asked.

"I dunno..." their friend replied.

"What's up with Nicole?" yelled a member of the Japanese Culture club.

Nicole had stretched out one hand, as if she intended to touch the water ball. Oblivious to the cacophony of the chaos around her, she approached her creation. The closer she got to it, the darker the day became. Finally, when she was standing so that her hand was no more than a few inches away, the sky was a velvety black. The full moon hung in the sky and glowed lavender, making the water ball sparkle. Nicole shifted her foot to take one more tiny step. As her fingers made ghosting contact with the surface of the ball, it exploded. People screamed again as they were drenched by water rushing straight at them, hard enough to knock them over. Several people fell down and others were knocked over by those who fell near them.

"Hey!" yelled a male voice.

Everything went totally silent.

"Oh my God! Nicole's gone!" screamed Ashley.