AN: I swore to myself I wasn't going to start another story until I finished either my Heathers story or my Repo! story.

Then my mother took me to see Phantom earlier this week.

It was the first time I'd ever seen it live, and I've been listening obsessively to the Royal Albert Hall 25th anniversary soundtrack ever since, and reading phanfiction, and then I finally got around to reading Susan Kay's Phantom, and one thing led to another, and now here I am. The updates for this will get much more regular once I have my laptop back (it's broken, I'm typing this on my mother's desktop computer while I'm home alone). I also have a POTO/Les Mis X-over that I'm going to eventually post starring Enjy, Erik, 'Ponine, and Meg that is an (eventual) Enjonine and does not yet have a title.

btw, just so you know, I'm picturing Ramin Karmiloo as Erik for this. I've developed a bit of an obsession with him and his magical voice thanks to the RAH 25th soundtrack, so yeah.

DISCLAIMER: If I was Leroux, I'd be dead and French and a dude, and if I was ALW, I'd have been at Royal Albert Hall for the 25th anniversary performance (which I wasn't, nor am I British, nor have I ever been married to Sarah Brightman), and as for the Kay elements in here, I have no idea her current state of being and/or whereabouts. I also don't own the basic premise of this, that belongs to Jennifer Donnelly. My only claim to ownership here is over Miette.


PROLOGUE
Modern Day
Paris, France

The day Miette Comtois's life changed forever was just a normal day like any other.

The nineteen-year-old was, as she often had starting at age twelve, exploring restricted areas of the catacombs that lay beneath her native Paris. She was really quite adept at doing so undetected, not that it was something she went around bragging about. (After all, she didn't want to get arrested for it or anything.) At that particular moment in time, she was squeezed into a narrow passageway and worming her way through on her stomach, dragging herself along with her elbows, flashlight strapped to her forearm so that its beam of light penetrated the darkness in front of her like a beacon to guide her home, which was ironic, she thought wryly, since Miette had always felt quite at home there among the dead in the labyrinthine mass grave underneath the streets of Paris, more so than anywhere else, in fact, as odd as it may have sounded.

She had always found that she didn't particularly care much for the living, despite being a member of it herself. They were too loud and selfish and overall quite obnoxious for her taste; now, the dead, on the other hand, were another matter entirely, and perhaps it was for that reason that she preferred to spend time among them rather than aboveground in the streets of Paris.

Finally, she came to the end of the tunnel she was in and squeezed out, staying on her hands and knees a moment to catch her breath before getting to her feet.

Miette was thought of as being quite...well..."eccentric" was the word used by most. She was rarely ever home and didn't hang around at the same places as other people her age that were in her social group (not that anyone knew she was going to the catacombs instead), and she wasn't into the same things as the other girls in her age or social groups. She'd never had a boyfriend (just as well, she supposed; most guys she knew were either assholes, "nice guys," or complete idiots), and when she wasn't in the catacombs, she was always wearing this leather moto jacket, no matter how hot it was. She wore multiple rings of different types on each hand, not to mention all her bracelets, and always had on this one particular necklace that, whenever someone asked her about it, she'd drop down her shirt and get all defensive suddenly. Overall, she could be summed up as the eccentric one who lived with her uncle and spent more time underground with artfully stacked bones than she did anywhere else. Even her teachers had always found her a bit...off.

Though Miette had no interest in dating, and though he knew this quite well, Uncle Théo thought it really was a shame that none of the boys had ever shown an interest in her. She really was quite pretty. With auburn hair, green eyes, and pearly skin, Miette looked very much like her mother, Théo's younger sister who, along with her husband, had been killed in a car wreck when Miette was ten. Unfortunately, Miette's aunt had also been in the car, and though she survived, she was in her coma so long that Théo had eventually lost hope and taken her off life support so she wouldn't suffer. It had just been him, Miette, and Bijou, the cat, ever since.

Lost as she was in her thoughts, Miette didn't realize that there were approaching footsteps until suddenly, the "catacomb cops," as she called them, were right there in front of her, shining their flashlights in her face, forcing her to shield her eyes with her arm as she squinted against the sudden brightness. It took all of sixty seconds before her instincts kicked in and she turned and fled in the opposite direction, turning off her own flashlight so the beam wouldn't draw attention to her in the darkness of the tunnels. In the pitch black, she tripped over something and hit her head.

The last thing she saw was the approaching beams of the cops' flashlights.


So now you've met Miette! Also, in case you couldn't tell, I got the title for this from the lyrics of "Masquerade."

Um...What else? Erik will show up next chapter, I promise you that. And...Oh! If you want to hear about my Phantom experience the other day, feel free to ask, I'll be happy to share with you! Otherwise, that's about it, so...yeah. I hope you enjoyed the prologue, and be sure to review so Erik doesn't Punjab me! :)