Well, this is, like, my first fanfic EVER. So please don't hate me. At times, it may hardly seem like a fanfic at all, but this is a story idea I've had for a while, and it centers around Romeo X Juliet, so it technically qualifies, ne?

This story takes place in 2010, and yes, I totally made some of the characters (Italian) otakus, so there may be some outer-anime references. That's just a little Easter egg from myself I threw in, hardy har har. But, yes, Neo Verona still has that Italian atmosphere, even if it isn't technically Italy. In this story, I've kind of put it off the coast of Sicily, in the Ionian Sea (between Italy and Greece, but more towards Italy). The Goddess from the anime may appear, but for now, Christianity does exist there. It was bound to spread there, anyhow.

Also, forgive me if I got any Italian trivia wrong. I basically picked a modern-day Italy setting, since the series is in sort of an ancient Italy, but...a floating continent. (Make sense?) I'm of Italian descent, but I've never actually left America (apparently, I went to Canada when I was six months old, but that doesn't count). European time, the metric system; there were several things I don't use (often, at least) that I put in. You can correct me, but don't be too harsh! (Please?) And now you may enjoy the story. Yay.

I was standing on top of a corpse.

Its head had exploded, and yet there was no carnage, no gore. It was solid beneath my feet, and rough, not like skin.

It wasn't skin. It was bark. Tree bark, thrumming with power beyond which my human mind could comprehend, fading fast, retreating into some other dimension and leaving this one helpless. I raised my head, and it was, indeed, the top of a broken tree that I stood upon: almost fifty meters across, splintering away at the edges. The air was alive with a golden glow.

In the center of this great tree's carcass, there knelt a beautiful woman. Her long red hair fluttered around her in a firm breeze, and from her shoulderblades sprouted wings; blinding wings, lit up like spotlights, stretching high above for meters and meters. They beat up and down, lifting the ground that the tree grew from.

And, in her arms, there was a man. His skin was white, and he wore dark armor, battle-scarred. I could just see his face-a long, glistening streak of blood ran from his hairline to his jaw. Looking along his back armor further, I saw the reason behind his pale skin: a massive gash, surrounded by dried blood, ran deep down through its tough shell (and, I suspected, through his very body). He was dead, but he had died in some sort of struggle. And he had fought harder than I could fathom just then.

The woman, looking wearier by the moment, turned her gentle, chestnut eyes to me. There was deep sorrow within them, but it was blocked by a great hope, for something I couldn't understand.

Despite her distance from me, I could hear her voice as if it were right beside my ear, murmuring to me:

"Should the need arise, call, and we will come."

With that, her eyes slid closed, her head slumped into the shoulder of the man in her arms, and she died.

"Renata? Renata de Gloriosa, are you listening to me?"

I sat for a few moments, waiting for my brain to register the voice of the person standing above me. When it did, I shot up in my chair so quickly, I went briefly airborne.

Mrs. Raffaella de Luca leaned over my desk, peering sternly at me over the top of her wire-rimmed spectacles, her wide eyes looking like black holes as they sucked in my self esteem. She has the ability to do that to her students on a regular basis, whenever they happen to set a toe out of line.

I cringed away, gulping. "Oh, ah...hello, Mrs. Luca..."

"Hello, Miss Gloriosa. I do hope you enjoyed your nap?" She raised herself to full height from her former position, hands on her hips. Now she looked down on me, and I truly felt like the sewer rat she was trying to convey to me that I was.

Still disoriented from sleep, I blinked twice. "I, uh..."

"Detention has ended." She gave a wicked smile, and, without warning, slammed her trademark meterstick down on my desk with a head-rattling crack!

I jumped about fifty feet, and my brains nearly splattered along the walls of my skull. "Y-yes ma'am! I m-mean, I'm sssorry!"

"Quit your babbling and head on home." She spun on her stiletto heel dismissively and walked back up the aisle, toward her desk.

Like any teenager who wasn't brain-dead would, I up and scattered.