Chapter One: During the Power Outage
Disclaimer: I do not own any of the characters or the concept of Angelic Layer. CLAMP owns that part. However all new characters and the plot belongs to me.
A/N: Well I said I was going to rewrite this story and I've finally gotten around to doing it. I was going to start it last month but I decided to National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) and that took up all of my time.
For those who don't know NaNoWriMo is sort of a competition between you and time. During the course of November and starting from scratch, maybe a few notes or so, you write at least 50,000 words of a novel. The story can be any genre and it can even be fanfiction. So if I had any free time it was spent doing that and at some points I almost failed but I ended up with a good strong 51,627 words, making me an official winner. I encourage anyone who loves writing to try it out next year. Just an .org onto NaNoWriMo and you've got the site.
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She sat down on one of the benches after her tennis lesson, only this time she was the one giving the lesson. Normally she came on a different day with a later time, with people her age, not elementary kids. But when her coach, Mary, called and said she was incredibly sick and couldn't make it Brooke Miyoko was forced to take over. Not that she really minded all that much. Brooke was a professional player, she had been for a year or so, the timing was just a bit annoying because there was supposed to be some kind of final tournament on one of her favorite channels. She would have to peddle hard on her bike in order to make it home on time.
Brooke took a swig out of her water bottle before picking up the tennis basket and proceeding to pick up the balls. As she put the basket on the ground and on top of a ball, the flexible metal moved and she was able to scoop the balls up without having to bend over. Lucky for her it was a generally cool day, the younger kids always left the balls out and sometimes when she helped out previously the back of her neck got burned.
As she was nearing the last couple balls on the court she heard a car horn honk and Brooke quickly looked up and over at the parking lot. Her older sister Aimee was getting out of the car and Brooke waited while her sister ran over towards her, her brown hair falling out of the messily-made bun on the back of her head.
"What are you doing here? I thought I was supposed to ride home today?" Brooke asked as her sister got closer. Aimee took a moment to catch her breath, she was in good shape but the court was a great size bigger than most.
"M-mom called and a-asked for me to bring you h-home." She panted, taking one more moment to get her breath back before straightening up.
"She was watching the weather and said that the storm that's been building up is going to strike this area soon, maybe half an hour or so, and didn't know if you could make it back in time so she wanted me to get you just in case." Aimee explained.
"What about work?" Brooke asked, picking up another ball with the basket. Aimee bent over and picked up a few balls, then dropped them in.
"Closed up early, every shop is. What kind of person would try to go to a restaurant during a huge storm that's predicted to tear down trees?"
"Shino." Brooke stated, referring to their older brother. Their dad was a full-blood Japanese, their mother only half. Shinosuke was the only one born in Japan, and the only one with a full Japanese name. When the Miyoko's moved to London a year before Aimee was born their mother wanted to name the rest of her children with more traditional English names, even though Brooke knew her siblings and her had some of the most uncommon names in the school. She had never met another Aimee yet, there was only one other Brooke in the school, and her younger brother Cobey had the same situation as Aimee's name.
"Well yes, he doesn't seem to have much common sense but he was valedictorian of his class and was smart enough to get one of the top positions in his company only after a year and a half of working there. That's why he got transferred to Japan and also why dad-." Aimee cut herself off.
"What about dad?" Brooke asked as she suddenly stopped picking up balls to look at her sister with a serious look on her face.
"Nothing. You'll find out about it later in due time. But I guess since school's about to end they might even tell you today." Aimee mumbled as she got to the last part. She picked up the last ball and tossed up in the air before placing it gently on top of the others.
"Tell me what?" Brooke asked a more serious tone in her voice.
"Nothing." Her sister said again rolling her eyes and giving a sarcastic smirk. Then she turned her back on Brooke and started to head towards the gate.
"Aimee! You cannot talk like that and say it's nothing. It has to be something!" Brooke complained as she followed her sister, the basket bumping uncomfortably against her leg.
"Maybe, like I said dad wants to tell you."
"Then why in the world did you mention it?"
"Do you think your bike will fit in the back?"
"Oh come on! Do you like torturing me?"
"I guess it will have to fit won't it?"
"I give up!" Brooke exclaimed.
"Maybe if I use the wrench in the trunk to lower the bars and seat…" Aimee mumbled again, completely ignoring her sister.
"Now you're just being impossible." Brooke huffed as she sent a glare towards her sister. She would have rather slapped her on the back of her head but the basket of tennis balls made it hard to walk let alone hit someone.
"If it messes up the interior of my car Brooke's going to have to pay for it I guess." Aimee continued.
"OW!" she suddenly yelled as a ball collided with the back of her head. She whipped around, rubbing the back of her head, "BROOKE!"
"What? Little old me? I thought I didn't exist the way you were talking. I had to prove I was real somehow didn't I?" Brooke said sarcastically. She bent over and picked up the ball she had thrown as it rolled back towards her. She bounced it up and down in her hand a few times before looking at her sister.
"At least I can control my anger." Aimee said as she caught her sister's eye.
"But I'm not angry." Brooke replied with a fake pout on her face.
"Then I'd really hate to see you when you are angry."
"You wouldn't be able to see me. You'd be buried under a pile of these things." Brooke referred to the tennis balls. She started to walk forward and she tried to keep a straight face but as she passed Aimee the corners of her lips couldn't help but curl up a bit into a smile.
"Would I now?" Aimee asked folding her arms and following her sister, her own anger disappearing.
"Yup. You wouldn't be able to tell which way was up or down."
They had finally reached the gate that connected to the parking lot. Brooke took out a key and opened the shed next to the gate on the other side. After placing the balls inside and locking the shed, the two sisters spent a couple minutes working on getting Brooke's bike to shrink. They really did have to lower the bars and seat to fit it, and even with that done they could barely stuff it inside the small car.
As soon as the two girls got into the green car the rain started, the first few drops splattering on the windows.
"See, you wouldn't even be at the road yet and the rain has already started." Aimee pointed out as she turned on the car and backed up to get on the road.
"Yeah yeah, just drive." Brooke shook her head, with just a little smile still remaining. Brooke had a problem with storms, not water in general, but storms. It was a bad experience she didn't like to think of but every time a storm hit, no matter how big or small, her heart always raced a little faster. Not that she let her family see her fear, they thought she had gotten over it long ago.
Aimee took a left past the public swimming pool before she turned on the radio. Static made the songs almost impossible to decipher and after five minutes Aimee gave up and turned it off. The traffic light in front of them turned green and Aimee turned to the right onto the main road that their street branched off of.
It was silent as the car moved forward. The only thing that made any noise was the steady drops of rain hitting the car. Brooke noticed that the drops were hitting them faster and with more power. Aimee was driving much slower because now they couldn't see more than five feet in front of them.
"Maybe we should pull over into a driveway or something." Brooke suggested. She could feel a little bit of the color in her face draining away but she was doing her best to keep her composure. She would feel much more comfortable if the car stopped moving, images of them in a ditch were scaring her more than the storm.
"No way. We don't know how long this is going to go on, we might stuck out here for hours and in the worst part of it too. Plus out in this area there are more trees. I'd rather be in the house and have one fall on us than in this tiny car. Sorry, we're going to keep moving forward no matter what the pace is." Aimee told her sister, leaning forward a bit to try and see further down the road.
"We won't have to worry about a tree if we end up turned upside down in a ditch." Brooke retorted dolefully.
"I'm not going to drive us into a ditch. Plus we're only a three minute drive from out house. What's wrong with you?" Aimee asked glanced over at her sister for a second. It was all she needed to know what was running through her sister's mind.
"You're scared." she stated almost in surprise.
"No I'm not." Brooke responded back, no trace of the lie in her voice, "I just thought it would be better to stop but you've proven me wrong."
"Really?" Aimee asked knowing that what she heard was correct but the way Brooke had said it so honestly that she doubted herself now.
"Yes." Brooke responded grabbing her small purse she had with her. She opened it and took out a stick of gum and then offered one to her sister.
"No thanks." Aimee said, squinting harder for a second and then turned on the left blinker. She was only going ten miles per hour but she slowed down even more as she made the turn down Birch Road. The rain subsided a little as there were more trees to block the rain and seeing this Aimee sped up a little. Finally they reached Williams Avenue. Aimee took the right and then right once more as it was their driveway.
Aimee pulled into her spot and the two rushed out of the car as neither had an umbrella. They ran up their steps, feeling the cold rain beat against them furiously. When they reached the door Brooke wrenched it open and she and Aimee threw themselves inside the house, slamming the door behind them. In the brief twenty seconds they had spent outside they were soaked everywhere, dripping water on the floor.
Brooke heard the sound of a pot being placed down and hurried footsteps as their mother rushed into the room.
"You're home, thanks goodness. I thought you wouldn't have made it back and would have stopped somewhere along the way." she said as she stopped in front of the two. Then she looked at the both of them and then at the wet floor.
"Wait here for a moment." she told them and she left the room for a moment. Then she reappeared a minute later with two thick towels.
"Dry off as much as you can then go get changed. I've got to go and finish the dishes." their mother finished as she handed the two girls the towels and left for the last time. In silence the two girls dried themselves off as best they could before taking off their wet shoes and placing them by the door. Aimee went to the laundry room to put the towels in the wash while Brooke went into her room.
Since she knew she wouldn't be doing anything else that day she took out her purple fleece pajamas and changed. She made sure that she put her wet tennis clothes on the towel she kept in her room. Then she undid her brown hair that she had placed into a braid and brushed it. As she put the brush down she looked for a second into her blue-gray eyes.
Brooke took the moment to look at herself and she knew was decent in looks. Her friends told her that her oriental appearance made her good-looking but she didn't think it was anything too special. The prestigious school system she and Aimee went to had a lot of foreign students due to its influence so it wasn't like looking different made you stand out.
Height wise she stood about 5 foot 1 inch, a little short for a fourteen-year-old, but it made her faster on the tennis court. Along with tennis she was also good at most sports, except for soccer. Shino was the only child of the family to have inherited any talent of that particular sport.
She gave herself a smile before walking away from the mirror to pick up her tennis outfit to go put it in the wash. Aimee already had the washing machine going but she was told there was plenty of room left. It was right before she was about to leave that Aimee brought something to Brooke's attention.
"Didn't you want to watch some kind of tournament thing today?" she said, then she watched a look of shock come over her sister's face.
"That's right! I'm missing the whole thing, it's probably over by now!" Brooke said frantically before running out of the room and into the room where the family television was. She grabbed the remote and hopped onto the couch, hurriedly pressing the on button and flipping to the Japanese Channel.
Earlier that week she had seen the end of a commercial that had been advertising the finals of some big competition. She hadn't seen a lot of it but from what she had seen Brooke realized the object of the game was a fighting match was between little robot dolls controlled by their owner. Her curiosity had been aroused and sneaking onto Aimee's laptop she found out that the game was called Angelic Layer and the fight was between finalists Misaki Suzuhara and Ran Hidaka. Apparently it was a rerun of last year's tournament but it didn't make any difference to Brooke.
She had caught it at the last couple minutes. Brooke was disappointed she had missed so much of it but was glad at least she could see the outcome. That was one thing she avoided when looking up information, she wanted it to be like it was happening just as she was watching it.
The two little robots were fighting on what seemed to be the surface of a small volcano, both dangerously close as what looked like lava. The smaller pink and red angel appeared to be in danger of losing as the much taller angel was steadily beating her towards the lava. Brooke gripped the remote tightly as suddenly a loud rumble came from deep inside the volcano and within seconds thick gray smoke was billowing from the top.
The surface shook violently, leaving both angels to momentarily forget the fight and stare up at new occurrence. The smoke hit each one and the smaller one had more trouble keeping her balance. There was more noises issuing from somewhere inside the fake volcano and before anyone could realize what was going on large, molten rocks were flying from the spout followed by large blasts of lava.
"Watch out!" Brooke said without realizing she had said anything at all. She also hadn't realized that Aimee had come into the room also and had taken the spot next to her on the couch and was also watching intently.
The angel who looked like a gypsy, dressed in brown and blue, started to quickly back away from the apparent danger. Brooke wondered what the other one was going to do and soon her eyes grew wide and her mouth opened a bit. The pink angel was not running away from the new challenge but rushing towards it. She leapt into the air and with amazing skill leaped onto a top of one of the flying rocks. She spent less than half a second but Brooke was able to see that the bottoms of her boots were blackened a bit.
The angel repeated the process until she was at the top and standing on the only spot where lava wasn't spewing from. Brooke had been so focused on watching that angel that she wasn't concentrating on the other one who was now hesitantly following. The pink angel waited until the other reached where she was. At the spot where they were they each only had enough room for a few steps.
Brooke could see that the pink angel was having an easier time since she was smaller and could allow for moving room while the larger one could barely keep her balance. They fought for a minute more before started to buzz for each second that passed, there was only fifteen seconds left and each angel had the same amount of power left. Brooke wondered what would happen if the time ended and neither had lost anymore. Would it be like overtime?
She didn't have to wonder for much longer. Brooke was able to see what would happen before it happened. The gypsy angel stumbled only for a second and the smaller one saw it. With one swift kick the larger angel lost her balance and fell into the magma still inside the volcano. The second it happened the volcano disappeared and both angels were standing on a flat, glowing surface.
The pink angel stood up from the kicking position. The other one was lying down with her eyes closed and her clothes singed slightly. There was a seconds silence and the stadium erupted into furious cheers. The announcer was only just able to be heard over them even with his microphone.
"For the third year in a row the Miracle Player Misaki Suzuhara wi—"
"Hey!" Brooke exclaimed as the power went out. It snapped her out of her trance though. She hadn't been paying attention to the storm outside which had only gotten fiercer in the last ten minutes or so.
"A tree must have fallen and knocked over the power lines." Aimee said, looking out the window. Brooke jumped in shock.
"When did you get there?" she asked, placing her hand over her heart as it had begun to race.
"The whole time." Aimee said raising her eyebrow.
"Seriously?"
"Yeah."
"Wow." Brooke said slowly, amazed at her own stupidity. The light from a flashlight came from the doorway as their mother entered the room with Cobey trailing behind her quite white from fear.
"Aww poor little baby." Brooke laughed slightly and she opened her arms to him. The one and half-year-old eagerly climbed into her lap and Brooke wrapped her arms around him. Their mother lit the oil lamp and the room became filled with light although it made an unpleasant whirring noise.
"What's happened mom?" Aimee asked.
"The storm's gotten worse than expected. I could barely hear anything over the static but the warning system on the radio said that it's mandatory to stay inside. The roads are already flooded and many have lost power as we just have." she explained.
"See aren't you glad that I kept going Brooke?" Aimee teased slightly.
"Whatever, go pick up your Nobel already and get over it." Brooke said sarcastically, laughing slightly as she said it. Cobey, not knowing why she was laughing, copied her. Aimee shook her head with a large grin on her face.
"So what about dad?" Brooke asked as she gained composure of herself again.
"He's still at his office but everyone there will be fine. There's no real danger of anyone getting hurt unless they go outside." their mother responded one more.
"I bet you Shino would still leave to try and go to get something to eat." Brooke joked again.
"He better not. Of course in Japan it's sunny, or maybe its nighttime. I'm not sure." their mom mumbled more to herself than to the children.
"I don't think even he's that clueless." Aimee said, her grin only getting larger.
"Probably right." Brooke shrugged. Cobey then gave a huge yawn and Brooke giggled.
"He's tired already. It's only what, five?" Brooke said, slightly surprised.
"I'm actually pretty tired too." Aimee stated, the smile gone and she was stretching.
"How?" Brooke asked in amazement. She had been playing tennis for an hour and she was only a little tired.
"Dunno, just am. I think I'm going to take a nap."
"Nap!" Cobey recognized what Aimee said and jumped slightly to show that's what he wanted to do also.
"Fine." Brooke agreed.
"A small nap does sound nice." their mother agreed also.
"Okay then, nap time it is." Brooke said. Aimee gave her a little pat on the shoulder before standing up and walking over to the pile of blankets.
"Mom you can have the other couch." she told her, throwing her a blanket and then one at Brooke.
"Thank you honey." she said and she took the blanket and started to lie down. Brooke threw Aimee an extra pillow or two before lying down with Cobey next to her. She wrapped the blanket around both of them and once Aimee was settled she reached over to the lamp and turned it off, the room filled with darkness once more. The room was quiet only for the sound of the storm outside. Somehow as she lay there exhaustion crept into her and Brooke found herself asleep within seconds.