Chapter One

There Gently Came a Rapping

It had been a 'normal' day for Chisame Hasegawa if you could call it that. She was at home at the moment complaining about her class 3A. "That brat of a teacher, how dare he. First he makes me translate an incredibly hard paragraph, which I couldn't do, and then everyone started to laugh at me for it. I'd like to see them do any better." she said as she removed her school uniform and started changing into an very fancy looking teal dress and matching bonnet.She turned on her computer that automatically went to her home page, well it wasn't actually Chisame's home page but Chiu's, the number one Net Idol in Japan, home page.

Chiu was Chisame's online alibi. She was checking the ratings board like she usually did and laughed, like she did everyday, when she saw it. "Still number one by far!" She said excitedly and laughed again. Still chuckling lightly her eyes slowly looked across the screen, checking for the names of other sites she was beating, when in fourth place was a site that was unfamiliar with, "Nightmare Circus? What the hel.." She thought aloud but was cut short by small chirping and scratching sound coming from her window.

The curtains were over the window and Chisame couldn't see what it was, not that would help for it had began to darken a little while ago. The chirping and scratching continued. Chisame's curiosity had gotten the best of her as she walked over to the window, "Stupid noises, probably a tree outside brushing against the window." She said to herself as she crept closer to the window. She reached the window and paused for a while and thought, "Wait a minute, there are no trees near the window, or this floor! What if one of my fanboys found out where I was and was stalking me?" She was sounding a bit panicked now but she made a decision, "All right then, if it's some stalker I'll just..." She paused a bit to think harder, "..put on my glasses. Yeah, then he won't know I'm Chiu." She smiled triumphantly but still reached for the curtains slowly. She stopped and took a deep breath and pulled open the blinds, and there on the windowsill was nothing, nothing at all. Chisame sighed in relief. "Must have been nothing after all." She turned away from the window and then the sounds came again. Chisame fell onto her knees and yelled "Have I gone crazy from being around my classmates to much!" She started to stand up as the sound kept pounding her ears. She turned around walked up to the window and yelled out "What!?!?" She got a few angry replies from people who had there windows open but she ignored them and looked around. She was just about to turn back around and catch her breath when a small bird flew into her room. She screamed as it brushed past the side of her head.

The bird had been flying circles in the room and perched on top of Chisame's monitor as she had to deal with a few complaints from her neighbors saying that she's to loud and should stop screaming. She explained that her pet bird had gotten out and scared her. The neighbors agreed with that but eyed her oddly. She still had the dress on, the bonnet had fallen off when she thought that she had gone crazy, she had no explanation for that but the neighbors didn't want to hear one for it anyway. When they left Chisame eyed the bird tilting it's head at her as if questioning her as well. "Oh no, uh uh, no way are you going to crap all over my computer." She said to the bird and she hurried off to one of the closets, looking back at it while she searched. She brought out an old hamster cage and opened it's door. The bird hopped in merrily and Chisame closed the door quickly. She placed it on the counter and eyed it suspiciously, " Stupid bird, I don't want you... But I'm not going to leave it outside either, the cold would kill it." She said quietly to not frighten the thing. She thought over what to do and said "I'll take you to school tomorrow and hopefully one of those nut jobs will want you." At the mention of school she looked down at the dress, the computer and then the clock. "Ack! It's so late! I'll hardly get any sleep!" She yelled and in almost a response she heard thumping from above her, a typical gesture of 'Shut up down there'. Chisame quickly changed into her pajamas, put the dress and bonnet away and turned off the computer. She draped a cloth over the cage and went off to bed.

Chisame's sleep wasn't perfect, she was haunted by dreams of a terrifying circus that she attended in her cosplay dress but she soon realized she wasn't attending the circus at all she was part of it. All of class 3A was there laughing when she tripped over what seemed to be cage. She plummeted down into a dark abyss when a giant bird of some strange species came flying at her. She landed on it's back and looked toward it's head and there sitting on it's neck was someone in a Mahora middle school uniform. The person started to turn around when she heard a loud buzzing.

The alarm clock buzzed and buzzed for minuets before Chisame hit the button to shut it off and then looked at the time. Ah! I've slept in to late, I'll miss my first class and by the time I get to Mahora my class will be... with that boy." She said grimly. She hurriedly put on her uniform and started to leave. She was just about to close the door when a small 'cheep' came from her room. "Right, the bird," she said as if it was a terrible burden. She went back into the room grabbed the cage and shook it a bit "hey, bird bet your brain is bigger than some of the bird brains your going to see today," with the cage in hand she got onto the train and left for Mahora. She was fairly alone on the train but got stares from most of the people that were on the train. The bird was chirping excitedly and was making a lot of noise. A few people asked if she could make it stop and one child pulled on his mom's shoulder and ask if they could get one like it. Then Chisame took a closer look at the bird, once she saw it in the light she couldn't identify it. It didn't seem like the type of bird that normally lived in Japan. She thought that maybe it had escaped from the zoo then sighed. "You seem like a lot of trouble you know that." She said to the bird, drawing even more stares. She then remembered her dream of an odd bird that caught her and the uniformed person that, now, seemed to have been piloting it. Chisame had been thinking the whole time until a voice came over the intercom, "Mahora Academy," she blinked as if being woken suddenly and walked off the train with cage in tow.

When she arrived in the school the period was just ending and the short break to get to next class had started. Not wanting to scare the bird to death because of the noise Chisame choose to go straight to English, Class 3A, at least there is would be moderately quiet. When she walked in the only people she saw was the Library group talking amongst themselves in very hush tones (she swore she heard Negi-sensei mentioned) , Ku Fei and Sakurazaki Setsuna talking about something to do with fighting and Zazie Rainyday sitting on the windowsill, much like the bird currently in the cage had done, staring outside and looking sad compared to her normal expressionless look. Chisame took her seat and put the cage on top of the desk. She started to rest her head in her hands and seemed to study the bird that was hopping around. Suddenly the Narutaki twins had appeared beside her and started talking in that loud, cheery voice they always did, "What that in there Hasegawa-san?" Fumika asked

"Yeah, is that your pet or something?" Fuka added.

"So much noise this early" Chisame thought, "Why couldn't they have left me alone?" Chisame coughed, "No you annoying twins this is not my pet but it is someone's. It was on my windowsill last night and I thought someone here might want it," she said. She was about to tell the twins to go away when the bird hopped to the side of it's cage and started chirping happily. Zazie Rainyday had gotten off the windowsill and started walking over to the cage. The sad expression had left the girl's face and was replaced by a slight happy look. When Zazie reached the cage she bent over and looked right into the birds eyes and starting whistling to it. The bird stopped hopping and chirping and answered Zazie with what sounded almost like a 'purr'. Zazie, for the first time ever it seemed, smiled.

"Who found the bird?," she asked. She obviously hadn't been listening.

"I did. Why do you ask?" Chisame answered. "This is one of the strange people I like to avoid" her mind shot off. Zazie wrapped her arms around Chisame. "Wha...What are you doing?!?" Chisame shouted. By now everyone that was in the class was watching what was developing in the back of the room.

"What do you think is going on back there Yuecchi?" Nodoka asked

Yue shook her head, "I'm not sure Nodoka, what about you Haru?"

Haruna too shook her head "I'm not sure, I heard that the circus Rainyday-san is in made a web page to increase advertising and Hasegawa-san is the number one net idol so there might be competition, but the hugging? I'm not to sure."

"I might know what's going on," a voice said from behind them. The library group all turned around and saw who it was, Kazumi Asakura.

"What a surprise," Yue said sarcastically

"All right Kazumi, what do you got?" Haruna asked.

"Well," she started, pulling out a small notepad, "sometime last night, Rainyday-san had reported a missing pet."

"A missing pet? I didn't know she had one," Haruna replied

"No one really did but apparently she doesn't just have one pet she has dozens,"

"D..d...d... dozens of pets in one room, why doesn't she get reported or complaints against her?" Nodoka asked.

"Well the headmaster is a bit lenient on it because she uses them in her magic tricks."

"Magic tricks.." Yue repeated as she looked at Nodoka who started fidgeting with her fingers when magic was mentioned.

"So," Haruna cut in, "your saying that Rainyday-san lost a pet. Is that why she's hugging Hasegawa-san? Has the depression brought on by loosing a pet made her desperate for attention?"

"No" Kazumi flatly answered, "It means that Hasegawa-san found Rainyday-san's pet and she's happy about having her bird back." The library group all agreed that it made sense, except for Nodoka who was still fidgeting with her fingers.

Zazie was still hanging on to Chisame in the back of the room, "Hey! Get off of me!" Chisame shouted and Zazie complied and opened the door to the cage. The bird flew happily out of the cage and onto Zazie's shoulder who then pulled some seeds out of her pocket and raised the hand to her shoulder. The bird hopped into her hand and started eating. Zazie nodded, "Thank you, Hasegawa-san for finding him," she said quietly and turned back around to take her seat. More people had started coming into the classroom. Chisame felt lucky that Zazie had stopped and left her alone then and not now. People might start thinking she was as crazy as her, but when Zazie turned her back to sit down the image of Chisame's dream came back to her. The image of the person who was piloting that bird.