AUTHOR'S NOTES: Hi again, everyone. Whether you're starting this story for the first time or have already plunged in, I would like to welcome you to "Only the Beginning," and I'd also like to thank you for your time and support as you read.

I really like this story. I've been working on it since my sophomore year of high school... and now I'm in college, and I'm still not quite finished with it! I feel that this story really shows my transition from a fanfic author into a serious writer. It's a treasure to me, and I hope it will be a treasure to you as well.

I have been going through the entire peice and re-working it, re-formatting it, and just making it better overall. What you have been reading was the rough draft; now I present to you a more polished version. I have re-posted chapters 1 through 5, and hopefully the others will be up soon as well.

I hope you enjoy what I've spent the better part of four years on. Remember, I'm crazy about feedback, be it praise or criticism. Also, please invite your friends to read my story as well.

Lastly, here is the obligatory disclaimer, and this applies to the entire piece: I do not own Magic Knight Rayearth. I only own my original characters, and woe to the person who takes them as their own.


Chapter one… If I Fell

Where am I? I know I'm somewhere. There's no such thing as nowhere… is there? I'm so confused. I'm floating. It's dark. I don't think I'd recognize my surroundings even if I could see them.

What if there aren't any surroundings to not recognize? What if it isn't really dark, it's just empty and void? What if I'm floating in a black hole? What if—

A series of loud wails.

The heck? What's that?

Like the cries of anguished souls, but somehow… fixed, mechanical… beeping?

Eternal black hole limbo voids don't go beep… do they?

Klaxons keeping a steady rhythm, piercing, painfully annoying to hear.

It sounds strangely like… like…

"…like my clock." Mako finished the last half of the sentence out loud. The darkness evaporated, and the persistent beep grew even louder as his consciousness increased. At last, he achieved enough sense to roll over and turn the dratted thing off. The sudden silence left in the alarm's wake left his ears ringing for a second. He lay still, seriously considering going back to sleep, when his door opened.

"Mako! Hey, Mako, get up!"

"Leave me alone," Mako muttered, even though all hopes of blissful alarm-ignoring sleep had just been sliced to ribbons.

Riuki giggled from the doorway. "You're so cute when you're sleeping," she crooned sweetly.

"And you'd be cute with your face plastered to a wall. Get out." Mako rolled over on his other side, facing the wall. "I mean it."

"Oh, c'mon," Riuki persisted, sounding as if Mako had just cancelled Christmas, "you have to get up, or we'll be late. Don't you remember? You promised you'd walk with me today!"

Mako had to think about this one. When did he ever say that? Maybe last night… he and his sister had been playing cards, and he hadn't been listening to whatever it was she'd been saying, he'd just been nodding and saying "uh-huh" whenever she stopped for breath…

Riuki, ever the morning person, sat on the bed with him. "You have to. Come on, please?"

"Riuki, don't you have your own friends to hang out with?"

"Well—of course I do—but they're not as cool as you."

"I'm flattered. Leave me alone."

Riuki sighed. "You said you would, though." She began bouncing. "So-I'll-just-have-to-do-this-until-you-get-up," she added, one word on each rebound.

Mako groaned into his pillow, then sat up and pushed her off. "Alright! But I can't get up if you're doing that. Go grab something to eat, and I'll be ready by the time you're done." It was enough to shoo Riuki out of the room and grant Mako enough privacy to get dressed, though nearly not enough time; Riuki ate almost as quickly as she talked. Almost.


Mako Keines was fourteen. He also happened to be average. Halfway between tall and short for his age, ordinary build, right-handed, chestnut hair that never laid flat, and blue eyes—average, yes. Mediocre, no. At least, that's what he told himself every day to keep himself motivated as he strived for perfection—because, after all, he was a perfectionist of the worst sort.

Average, yes. Mediocre, no.

This is what he demanded of himself. Mako Keines would not tolerate mediocrity, partly because he knew he had potential; people told him he had potential all the time. He was quick-witted, intelligent. He made people laugh. He was creative.

However, he was also average.

Mostly, though, it was simply the fact that even the word itself—mediocrity— implied room for improvement, implied weakness. He hated that thought, and so he worked to slaughter every scrap of mediocrity he could find within himself. He placed high on tests. He'd made the soccer team. He could play the harmonica with both his mouth and nose. He was becoming the Mediocrity Slayer.

Of course, even a perfectionist is allowed a small life. Two of his favorite things to ever be created were sleep, which seemed to be getting more and more elusive as his hunt for perfection dragged on, and late-night card tournaments with his sister. Riuki Keines was a card master, with talent (and luck) enough to put adults to shame; she rarely lost anything she played… but her skills were put to the test when she and Mako began a furious one-on-one game and lost track of time, and when the clock was straining towards three in the morning (at which time Riuki would nearly begin dozing in her chair), Mako at least had a chance of winning.

This morning's performance hadn't been a usual occurrence. True, Riuki, who bore strong family resemblance to him, was his junior by just over a year, and she was an obnoxiously chipper loudmouth, and her obsession with strawberry-flavored candy had started to make her brother wonder if she wasn't a little insane, but she was his sister, and she wasn't bad company. It had been she, after all, who had come up with the "average, yes, mediocre, no" slogan.

Today they walked together, as promised, to a field trip, the last one of the year, a day trip to Tokyo Tower.

Riuki hummed a little to herself, soaking in the glory of the morning. Mako didn't hum or soak. He was too busy trying to remember the dream he'd been having when Riuki woke him up.

It had something to do with an eternal black hole limbo void.


At about the same time Mako and Riuki left the Keines residence, a girl was still at home some distance away, staring darkly into her mirror, searching her reflection as if searching for a glimpse of her soul. Her finger traced the outline of her pale, but still lovely, face dejectedly.

Why should she even leave the apartment this morning? What good would she be to anyone?

None at all, she decided, dropping her hand. Her hair, honey-blonde and perfectly straight, hanging halfway down her back, rippled with the movement of her arm. I just won't go. I'll say I'm feeling ill.

Sighing, she turned from her reflection and turned to leave.

She could say she was sick all she wanted to, she could decide to never leave her room again, she could begin packing her things to run into the wilderness and never return, but she knew she could never pluck up the courage to carry these schemes out. Keilin Makawa stepped into the sunshine drowning the street, but on the retinas of her heart, the golden beams of morning registered as darkness. Just like everything else.

Is there no point to anything?


"Li! I'm serious!" shouted a voice from down the hall. "I'm leaving—are you listening?—I'm leaving in thirty seconds and if you're not in the car by then, you can just run!"

"I'm almost ready! Just hang on a second!" a redheaded girl bawled as she hastily straightened the bow on her uniform with one hand and smoothed her wrinkled skirt with the other. The front door slammed shut; Li Kimoi gave a cry of desperation as she dove for her schoolbag, remembered she didn't need it, slid her shoes on, and positively flew outside, where her brother's car was pulling away in almost a threatening manner.

"Wait!" she screeched, flinging herself in the passenger's side.

Her brother gave an irritated grunt, running one hand through his dark hair. "Whatever happened to 'I'll be ready on time, I swear'?" he asked as he straightened the car and went from reverse to drive.

Li, struggling to collect her wits, slumped back against the seat. "Look, I'm sorry, okay?" she snapped, folding her arms sharply. "I just overslept!"

"Like yesterday."

"You didn't wake me up yesterday! Your fault!"

"And the day before that?"

"My alarm was broken," Li retorted defensively, feeling close to tears.

Her brother scented the danger of hysterics and didn't press the matter further. "I should have just gone without you," he muttered, more to himself than to her.

Li knew better than to shrug that comment off. More than once she had been seen soaring down the street, having been left behind after failing to get herself ready to face the day on time. Resigning to silent pouting, she checked her brick-red, shoulder-length hair in the rearview mirror, and then settled back into her seat.

It was going to be a very long day.


Riuki leaned as far over the railing as she dared to. "Mako! Mako, c'mere, the sky's just gorgeous, oh, come on…" She continued on like this until her older brother had joined her at the railing. "See those clouds? They're changing shape—oh, look at the city, it's really beautiful from up here!"

"Riuki," Mako cut in, "take a breath before you pass out and fall."

Riuki summoned her most irresistibly charming smile. "If I fell, you'd catch me, wouldn't you?"

Without waiting to hear Mako's answer, she folded her arms on the metal bar and rested her chin on them, gazing out over the city. "I wish every morning was like this one."

"I wish you'd find some way of being quiet for once," Mako blurted, then instantly regretted it. When she looked at him unhappily, he added, "Stillness enhances the view," hoping she would not hold it against him.

Comprehension dawned on Riuki's pretty face; she turned back to the horizon and froze, saying nothing as she contentedly absorbed the view.

Different classes behind them, some from their school but most from others, didn't seem to be thinking among those same lines. The noise swelled until silencing Riuki had hardly been worthwhile. Other students were steadily joining the ones at the railing. Mako found his attention drifting from the sky and the clouds to the people he didn't recognize.

A girl with flaming-red hair stood at Mako's right side, muttering to herself and apparently not appreciating the view in the slightest, while others shrieked with glee as they dropped spitwads over the side, and still others simply formed small, closed circles, chatting happily. Only one other besides the redhead stood alone, a tall, pale blonde, leaning against a far wall with her arms folded and eyes half-closed.

And then she looked up, as if she could sense Mako's eyes on her.

Not wanting to look as if he had been staring at her, he looked back to the redhead, but she had raised her eyes as well.

For one split second, these three stared at each other.

And then light flooded Mako's eyes, bright as the sun, blinding, almost painful— he couldn't see at all—he raised his arm to shield his eyes, but that did absolutely nothing to help—

The voice that cried out was pure and sweet, sad, desperate, and haunting:

"Magic Knights! Please—oh, please—you must come! You must come and fulfill that which you were destined to do—you must come and save our world!"

The light grew, if possible, even brighter, piercing his eyelids, which were clamped firmly shut—and, to his horror, Mako felt the floor under his feet vanish, and he was falling, surely he was going to hit the street, he was headed straight for the pavement, Riuki's words were ringing oddly in his ears—"If I fell, you'd catch me, wouldn't you?"—his dream came back to him, and he recognized the feeling of drowning in an eternal black hole limbo void, but this time with no harsh beep from his alarm to save him from its unfathomable depths.