Prologue
"I wish that I could cry
Fall upon my knees
Find a way to lie
About a home I'll never see
It may sound absurd but don't be naive
Even heroes have the right to bleed
I may be disturbed but won't you concede
Even heroes have the right to dream
And it's not easy to be me."
-Superman by Five for Fighting
A cool breeze lingered into the night; there was a gush of wind, followed by the rustling music of fall leaves swatting against the side of the house. Amidst the gentle lullaby of autumn, soft snores traveled from the main bedroom, through the creaky halls and along the empty rooms.
The lights went out early at the Rose-Long residence. Mr. Taiyang Xiao Long lied peacefully in bed, having fallen asleep with a book in his hands. A book, which his wife promised would be worth the read, until he figured out for himself that she could not be more wrong. It was a relatively tranquil evening. After all, it had been weeks since he slept this soundlessly without interruptions.
Little did he know, he would soon be unceremoniously woken up by a gleeful roar of laughter and the loud chatter of his two disruptive children.
One floor down from Taiyang's bedroom, the living room rumbled on with life.
"I found you! I found you!" A young girl with short reddish hair giggled through her teeth.
This first voice belonged to Ruby Rose, the youngest daughter of the household. Having celebrated her seventh birthday last week, Ruby believed that she was now old enough to do whatever she pleased. Naturally, on the night her mother was out of town, she snuck out of bed as soon as her father went to sleep, unmistakably waking up her older sister in the process.
The eldest daughter, Yang Xiao Long, tripped onto the floor as Ruby relentlessly tugged on one of her longer pigtails. She was only two years older, but she still towered over her sibling by a foot. Rubbing her blonde hair, which she inherited from her father, Yang jumped back onto her feet, looking positively devastated.
"What- Not again!" Yang half-shouted, meeting her sister's innocently unblinking eyes. "How do you keep finding me so quickly? I told you to count to one hundred."
"I did," the younger sibling nodded dutifully, "But I saw you hiding."
"Ruby!" The blonde gasped, forgetting to keep quiet. "You're not supposed to see me hide. That ruins the whole point of hide-and-seek. You know, hide? And then seek?"
Apparently not understanding, Ruby simply frowned in response. "Well, I didn't mean I saw you hiding right now."
"Well, when exactly did you see me crawl up the fire place then?" Yang demanded, slightly crossed as she stared down at her sister. "I'm not going to play with you anymore if you won't stop cheating."
"I wasn't cheating!" Ruby argued back, sounding personally insulted by the accusation. "I was-"
Bang!
A sudden noise echoed down from the first floor ceiling. Then, a short yelp of pain, and then a long deep moan. Yang's next words were soon drowned by a dozen angry thumps. The two figures froze on the spot. Both girls, with their eyes wide opened, stared guiltily up at the railings.
There was a small click and the room became flooded with light. There were three separate cries of pain, as all members of the family took a moment to adjust to the sudden fluctuation in brightness. A man, with messy blonde hair and slightly pink eyes, stood grumpily by the light switch.
"Ruby...? Yang?" He muttered while squinting at the living room clock. "It's already half past eleven. What are you girls doing down here?"
"Nothing!" Yang quickly lied, hiding herself behind Ruby's shorter form. "We were doing nothing!"
"We were playing hide and seek, but Yang kept saying that I cheated," whined Ruby, giving up the truth in the blink of an eye.
"You did cheat," hissed Yang from behind.
"No, I didn't!"
"Ruby, don't go picking fights with your sister," Taiyang groaned, squeezing the brim of his nose with thinning patience. "And Yang-"
He paused for a moment, inching closer to gather a better look at his oldest daughter. "Yang, why are you covered in soot?"
"Um…"
"She crawled up the fire place again," piped Ruby, swooping in quickly to expose her sister's mistake.
"She did what?" Wearing an expression of annoyed concern, Taiyang also began to raise his voice. "Yang, how many times do I have to tell you? You're not supposed to climb up the chimney! It's dangerous!"
"Ugh, Ruby! You are such a tattletale," Yang muttered underneath her breath.
"Well, you were-"
"That's enough," Taiyang stopped them, before another pointless argument could recommence. "It is way past both of your bedtimes. I want you girls back in your rooms before I start counting to ten."
"Okay…" Ruby pouted, seeming thoroughly discouraged. She huffed and puffed, shoving her small hands into her pajama pockets as she marched across the living room rug, towards the staircase. She glanced up, just before she took another step towards her room. "Dad? When's Mom coming home?"
"She'll be back by tomorrow morning, honey," Taiyang sighed, remembering to peck his daughter on the cheek as she passed by. "Go to your room and get some rest."
As soon as Ruby disappeared up the stairs, Taiyang's stare hardened. He couldn't stay too mad, of course, not with his daughter wearing that same, pitiful countenance of regret.
"Yang…" Taiyang began.
"Ruby started it," the blonde made sure to point out, before slamming her mouth shut once more.
"That doesn't matter," he rebuked her as gently as he could. "Tomorrow's a school day and I don't want another phone call from your teacher, telling me that you slept through all of fourth grade."
There was a short, indistinct grumble. Yang, though appearing immensely cheated of something, eventually nodded in defeat.
"Good." He hugged her along the shoulders. "Now, I want you to go clean yourself off before heading straight back to bed. Okay, sweetie? No more games tonight."
"Yeah, okay," the blonde mumbled, and then soon followed the footsteps of her sister.
Taiyang watched as she went, her shadow vanishing around the first corner. After a few minutes, he thankfully heard the sound of running water trickling from the upstairs bathroom. Satisfied, he turned his head, ready to resume back to his bed when his throat let out another prolonged groan. Several dark footprints of ash trailed from the fireplace to the empty hall, running across the wooden floor, directly through the living room carpet.
Though feeling sluggish, he resigned himself to find a mop. Summer would murder him tomorrow if he didn't clean this up.
"…Yang?"
The blonde lifted her head, seeing her sister through the bathroom mirror, her head poking out from behind the door.
"What?" Yang replied in a muffled voice, brushing away at her teeth. Even after suffering through her father's lecture, hiding in the chimney still remained as a clever plan in her mind; it didn't matter that she swallowed an unhealthy amount of dust in the process.
"Can you read me a story?" asked a rather timid voice.
Yang rolled her eyes, promptly spitting out some watery toothpaste into the sink.
"You're not four anymore, Ruby," she told her sister through a series of rinses. "Read your own stupid stories."
"But I like them better when you tell them," insisted Ruby.
The blonde frowned, silently gargling the water in her mouth as she watched her sister's pleading expression. Ruby clung onto the door knob, swinging back and forth in agitating unease. After all these years, Ruby insisted on acting like a helpless baby. It was cute, but at times it did get a little annoying. Nevertheless, Yang – deciding to make truce with this evening – spat out the rest of the soapy liquid and turned to face her waiting sister.
"Fine," she agreed shortly, wiping the water off with her sleeve. "But just one, and then you're going right back to sleep! I think you caused me enough trouble for one day."
"Okay!" Ruby smiled brightly before dashing out into the hall. Reluctantly, Yang set down her toothbrush, turned off the lights, and followed her sister into their shared bedroom. Within seconds Ruby had already flung herself into her own bed, flattening out the pillow and sheets into a perfect ready-for-sleep position.
"All right, this is the story of the Little Red-Cap," Yang started, tucking in a few missed corners as she picked out a book. "Once upon a time there was a dear little girl who was loved by everyone who looked at her, but most of all by her grandmother, and there was nothing that she would not have given to the child. Once she gave her a little cap of red velvet, which suited her so well that she would never wear anything else; so she was always called, Little Red-Cap."
"Wait. I already heard this one," Ruby soon interrupted.
"No, you haven't." Yang whipped up her most wicked, evil smile. "This one's the scary one, with the hunter and the big bad wolf that bites off the granny's head."
"...I want a different story." Ruby requested, remaining undeterred despite her sister's poor attempt at a scare.
"Well…" Yang sighed, dropping the act in mild disappointment. "What do you want me to read you then?"
"How about a story about dragons?" Ruby pondered out loud. "And knights, and princesses, and witches!"
"…Okay?" Yang's eye twitched at the growing list. After a moment of hard thinking, she tried again from the beginning - this time, from scratch. "Once upon a time, there was a little princess, and she was loved by everyone who looked at her, except for her older sister who wanted nothing more than for her little sister to just go to sleep already."
Yang paused for a moment, hoping that her sibling would have gotten the message. She hadn't. Ruby still stared at her, patiently waiting for her to continue the story.
"One day, the princess went for a short walk down the woods. Next to a large river, she ran into a big fat dragon that liked to breathe fire and pick its teeth with human bones. Oh no, the princess cried, somebody save me!" Yang improvised, speaking in a high-pitched squeaky voice. "Just then, a brave knight in shining armor came out of nowhere with his horse and pulled out his massive sword and-"
"No, no, no!" Ruby cut in, acting very quick and urgent. "You're telling it wrong!"
"How could I be telling it wrong?" Yang countered, eyeing her sister in disbelief. "I'm making it up as I go. It's my story!"
"But I didn't want the princess fighting the dragon," said Ruby, as if this was an obvious demand. "I wanted them to be friends."
"Fine, fine," grunted Yang. "Then it wasn't a dragon, it was the witch who can turn herself into scary looking monsters. The knight took the sword and sliced off the witch's- Why are you shaking your head?"
"Why would the knight hurt the witch?" Ruby argued. "She didn't do anything wrong."
"She's a witch!" Yang reasoned. "She's supposed to be evil."
"Yeah, but what did she do that made her so evil?"
"I don't know!" Yang, though only nine years-old at the time, nearly sprouted a very bad word. "Oh, come on, Ruby. You want the princess and the knight and the dragon and the witch to all be friends? Who's going to be the mean villain then?"
"Um…" Ruby pulled the covers closer to her face. "I guess there doesn't have to be one."
"It's not a very good story then."
"It sounds good to me."
"Fine then," relented Yang. Crossing her legs, she pat down her sister's arm, narrating her final revision in the fastest, quickest pace yet.
"Once upon a time, the princess went down to the riverside and befriended the big old dragon," the blonde rushed. "The dragon wanted to eat her but the princess really wanted them to be friends, so they did. They became friends. A knight came out from the woods and they all had a nice little tea party together. The princess thanked the knight for almost saving her life from an almost evil fire breathing dragon and the two of them got married. Later, the lonely dragon found an old evil witch and the two become friends too. The end."
"There." Yang huffed, slightly out of breath. She glanced over at Ruby, lifting a single brow in question. "You happy?"
Ruby opened her mouth, and then closed it again rather slowly. Perhaps she was a year wiser, since she knew better than to point out - for the third time - the obvious flaws in her sister's succinct, poorly constructed story. If Yang had been in a better mood, would her story have been more fun?
"…Sis, I'm sorry for tattle telling," Ruby, on second thoughts, apologized, shyly hiding away half of her face into the blanket as she did so.
It was quite an adorable scene, with the added feature of her pink dumpling cheeks and her overly guilt-ridden expression. Yang stopped frowning almost immediately, the feeling of exasperation and annoyance evaporating so quickly, she forgot why they had been fighting in the first place. An obviously silly reason, no doubt about that.
"...Nah, it's okay. I guess I shouldn't have been hiding there anyway." Feeling embarrassed and petty, Yang moved closer to hug her sister, but decided to ruffle up the top bits of Ruby's hair teasingly instead. "I'm sorry for calling you a cheater too."
"I didn't cheat," repeated Ruby, though this time it was much meeker.
"Yeah, okay. You're just really good at hide-and-seek." Yang grinned, deciding to let it slide once again.
"Do you want to know how I did it?" Ruby asked, her silver eyes suddenly lit with excitement.
"What do you mean?"
Ruby's eyes darted from left to right, carefully observing the room and the bedroom door before finally leaning forward and revealing her little secret.
"I saw it in my dream," she whispered, tickling the inner sides of her sister's ear.
"Huh?" Stifling a giggle, Yang pushed Ruby back onto her pillow. "You saw me hiding in a dream?"
"Uh huh." Ruby nodded rapidly, appearing far too energized for bed. "I saw you and me. We were playing hide-and-seek, just like before! And I saw you go up the fire place when I was counting down to a hundred."
"...And this all happened in your dream?"
"Yup!" Visibly triumphant, Ruby continued to smile very broadly. She waited for her sister's subsequent reaction, seeming ready to pounce and say something along the lines of "Hah! I told you so!"
"Oh… Okay then." Yang bobbed her head eventually, though it sounded like an awfully big coincidence. If it were true though… Even she had to admit, it was pretty cool. "You win, Ruby."
"Hah! I told you so!"
Yang chuckled, poking her sister right in the middle of her forehead to keep her from saying more. "Hey, who knows? Maybe I'll have a dream that tells me the future too, and then we can have a rematch tomorrow. Then we'll see who the real winner is."
"Maybe." Ruby shrugged, still looking mighty smug. Yang smirked in return, turning off their bedside lamp.
"Good night, Rubes."
"Good night, sis."
Author's Note:
Hello, readers. Thank you for visiting this story.
This is just the prologue for a long series that I've been planning for a while now. The reason it isn't included in "The Next Chapter" is because this will consist of much more chapters than my usual story arcs, which are almost always six to eight parts.
If you haven't caught the end of the synopsis, yes, this will be a superpower AU. I hope you all enjoy it!
Please, let me know what you think in the comments below!
And stay tuned for more.