This is basically like a pilot episode. I was planning on having this thing being over six parts, or seasons, using song titles for chapter titles. Thanks for giving this a chance, and please enjoy.

Disclaimer: I own nothing of DDR, and all I do have is this story.

Summary: This is the story of several people's lives. A mixed tale of romance, angst and drama. The choices they make, the path they all choose, and the one club that brought them all together. (Don't judge by the summary, it might be interesting.)

Chapter 1: Have You Never Been Mellow

Emi stared blankly at the blackboard in front of her. It was covered in a long string of unfamiliar scribbles, and the middle-aged teacher placed in charge of her class seemed to pay no attention to her or the eight other kids who had no idea what was going on. Her mid-cheek-cut blue hair curled inward at the bottom. The hat that usually hid the top of her hair from view lay on top of her backpack.

This was Emi's first year at high-school, and it hadn't been going on for very long. It was mid-September, and she had just had enough time to make a few friends, and notice a certain guy whose gym class happened to be going on outside her window. She was on the second floor, which would, hopefully, prevent anyone from that class from noticing her.

The sophomores had phys-ed with the seniors in that particular cluster, but that didn't really matter. Emi couldn't have cared less about the seniors. For all she knew, they were snobby older kids who didn't pay attention to the younger classes.

After giving another attempt at understanding the foreign language sprawled on the board, trying to be passed off as math, Emi became content with staring out the window.

A teenager with some facial hair and brown hair that stuck up as if being pulled towards the sky was trying to catch his breath. Gym was unsympathetic for those who couldn't keep up. More accurately, the phys-ed teacher was the unforgiving one. Leaning up against the cool cement wall of the school, He gasped a few more times before being talked to by someone.

"Can't keep up?" asked an older boy with black hair who was a few inched taller.

"Shut-up," the boy panted a few times before finishing his sentence. "Akira,"

"Man, Rage," responded Akira. "You really should get a grasp on that temper. Then again, it did earn you that name…" Akira smiled. Rage was about to respond with a few choice words, but he couldn't keep up with his breathing, and collapsed on the ground.

"How…do you…keep going like this?" asked Rage. Sweat from his brow blurred vision from his left eye. "You're not even winded!"

"I've been doing this for four years," Akira responded without thought. His gaze had turned directly upward, where the same girl was staring out a window again. She seemed to be staring tiredly at the school-yard, but with a strange focus. It was as if she was searching for someone. Akira fixed his sight so that he though he would be in plain view of her, but she seemed not to notice him staring back, and continued looking around as though searching for someone.

"And I've been doing this for two years…" started Rage, trying to make a good argument with his senior friend.

Akira seemed to ignore the last statement, and was now looking around the yard himself. He didn't get it. Everyone was in plain view of the window. No place was out of view except for the-

"Except for the wall right under the building…" Akira muttered to himself, and then stared at Rage. Rage returned the stare with a confused expression, and it grew when Akira suddenly smiled.

"What the hell are you-," Rage began, but was cut off by Akira.

"Stand over here for a second," Akira said, motioning towards an area farther away from the building. Still to tired to make some kind of argument, Rage mustered up the energy to walk towards the ground where the sunlight hit. Before he could say anything, Akira gave another command. "Now look in that window,"

Rage was getting irritated, but followed Akira's instructions and stared at where he was pointing. Rage's eyes fell upon a young girl, freshman most likely, who was staring directly at him. They stared at each other for a minute, before the girl turned red, and disappeared from view. She probably had her head on the desk to be sure she couldn't be seen.

"I think she likes you," suggested Akira. Rage thought on this for a minute. She wasn't bad looking, and didn't seem to have a bad personality. But then again, he was basing this off a two-minute staring match he had with her.

"I have an idea," started Akira. Rage knew where this was going. "I'm going to the club with Yuni tonight, if you want to meet this girl, then I'm sure Yuni wouldn't mind if you brought her along," Akira concluded.

Rage was surprised. Akira's girlfriend was a girl also in her senior year, and at the age of seventeen. Before that, in the young age of fourteen, she transferred into the school in mid-October. From what Rage had gathered in the one-and-a-quarter-years of knowing Akira, he had fallen in love as soon as he met her. They seemed to be the perfect match, and knew practically everything about each other, and Akira didn't seem to mind filling in the details of how great Yuni was.

At the one month that she had been in her other school, Yuni had succeeded in making her entire class, homeroom and otherwise, her friend. Both popular and pretty, her blond hair contrasted sharply with her wit. Smart and quick thinking, she could usually outsmart and fling a comeback at anyone who made a dumb blond joke towards her.

Yuni also seemed to have other talents that seemed to be unrelated to each other. At the age of fifteen, she won a small after-school talent show with a sketch that Akira wouldn't let go. The fact that she hadn't been driven off by Akira's clingy personality with her was surprising. It came as less of a surprise if you knew that Yuni was just as obsessive over Akira.

A whistle screeched through the air as Rage was about to give a response. The gym teacher was walking towards them with the whistle still in his mouth.

"Your break time is over," he said with serious face. "Why should you get to rest while the others still work?"

Rage and Akira sighed, and jogged back towards the crowd of other teenagers in their gym class. "Fine," muttered Rage as the jogged, and then he disappeared into the crowd before Akira could say how great spending time with Yuni was.

Emi's face was still red when the bell rang for lunch. Rage had stared directly at her and she was too stupid to pass it off as she was just looking around. What would he think if he knew that she was staring at him, and in fact, scanning the school yard for him! More accurately, what did he think? There was no way he didn't know that she was staring.

Emi bumped into Alice in the hall. Alice was a girl with long dark-blue hair, and a freshman like Emi. She didn't hesitate to make herself known. And her outfit outside of school kind of made her stand out. What most people didn't know, (and Alice made no effort to make it the opposite) was that Alice had a younger brother.

Emi had only nodded towards Alice when they bumped into each other, and was silent on the walk to lunch. It was only after they had gotten their lunches and sat down at the table they always did that a red-faced Emi finally blurted out what was making her so quiet.

"Rage saw me," She slurred. It was in such a fast manner that Alice almost didn't understand it. When she managed to figure out what the girl had said to her, she only responded with a 'What?'

"Rage saw me staring out the window!" Emi said a little slower, but still with a hint of fear in her voice. Alice didn't exactly understand what she was getting at.

"You mean when you stare at his gym class?" Alice asked. When Emi nodded, Alice sighed. That was to be expected. Emi had started this habit when she first noticed Rage, and he was bound to notice sooner or later. She was more surprised that it had taken two weeks to happen. "Well, what happened?" Emi shook her head a little, face turning a brighter shade of red.

"His friend pointed me out," Emi paced. "And then we kind…of…had a staring contest," Alice was surprised.

"He stared at you?" Alice started, and when Emi nodded, continued. "And you didn't look away? Or at least try to pass it off as something else?" Emi shook her head this time. "Hm, who knows what he thinks?"

Alice seemed to shrug off the matter in a nonchalant way, and then focused on her lunch. Having the second lunch wasn't nearly as bad as the kids who had the fourth, but without any kind of breakfast, Alice was starving.

Emi was shocked. "What kind of friend are you?" Alice didn't even look up.

"The kind that doesn't see the point in worrying about nothing," Alice finished her meal, and went up to dump off the tray. Emi just looked at the clock, and hoped that nothing would happen after school. Something like an awkward explanation wasn't exactly on her schedule.

Rage bent downward towards the water fountain after the last bell had rang, and cursed when it hit him in the eye. How the hell was that even possible? He kicked the side of the fountain in anger. Dumb thing.

After the situation that had caused half the hallway to look at him, Rage noticed that girl walking further down the hall. She was rummaging through her bag, seemingly trying to locate something.

It had been a few hours since lunch, and the rest of Rage's classes had been as boring as gym was horrible. Maybe he should actually take Akira up on his offer, and take this girl on a date. It might be worth getting to know her. She could turn out to be interesting.

He walked casually walked towards her with a small grin on his face. He realized Emi had stopped a little ways away from his location, still managing not to notice him. Her hand seemed firmly clasped on something, and she was struggling to pull it out. Rage stopped next to her and started to say something before-

Wham

A large binder came flying out of Emi's bag, and hit him in the face.

Emi walked down the hallway with her eyes focused on the inside of her backpack. The binder with everything she needed to do over the weekend was missing. It didn't make sense. How could something like that go missing? Even if someone did take it, there was nothing but papers in there, and anyone who opened it would see it wasn't worth keeping. Even the binder itself was ripped a little and covered in permanent marker.

After a few more minutes of walking and searching, she stopped walking. Maybe if she focused on one thing over the other, she could find it. When she saw the large red object cramped on the bottom, she smiled. She gripped it with one hand while holding her backpack with the other, and started pulling.

It seemed stuck. She pulled harder, closing her eyes from effort, and she finally forced it out.

Wham

And hit someone in the face. She heard stumbling behind her, and then turned to see someone cupping their hands over their mouth and nose. They were on the ground, and there eyes were slammed shut, and Emi thought she heard him say 'Damn it'

Oh God, Emi thought. I just hit Rage in the face.

"Oh no," Emi said. "Are you alright?" Emi leaned over near him, trying to inspect the area he was holding. Then she thought. 'Oh no, are you alright? Who says that? Emi blushed a little in embarrassment. Rage opened one eye, and seemed to be smiling. Emi was slightly taken back. She just hit him in the face with a huge binder, clearly caused a bloody nose, and he was smiling at her?

"Some way for me to ask someone out, huh?" Rage asked, his voice muffled through his hands. Emi's face immediately turned a brighter shade of red.

The cool water hit his face and turned into a pink shade as it hit the sink. Rage repeated this process until the blood around his nose was washed off. He had held a paper towel to his nose earlier to stop the flow of blood. Emi had some way of introducing herself to people. He wondered if she hit all her friends with a binder before telling them her name.

When Rage walked out of the bathroom, he noticed Emi leaning up against the wall next to it. Her bag was on her back and she was holding that godforsaken binder up against her chest.

"Sorry," she said quietly. Her face was still red as ever. She clutched the binder tighter.

"Hey," started Rage. "Don't worry about it." Emi seemed unconvinced that he was okay, so Rage decided to change to topic. "Hey, some friends of mine were going to the club on Saturday, did you want to go with?"

Emi was clearly still embarrassed, but another emotion crossed over with it, confusion. Seeing this, Rage decided to ask what looked now to be an obvious question.

"You've never been?" From Emi's blank look Rage thought it was safe to assume that she hadn't, but he waited for her to shake her head before continuing. "It's a small club on the edge of town. Not that many people know about it, and if they do, then they really don't care," Emi seemed to be clinging to every word. Rage felt a little weird and decided to wrap up his explanation.

"Anyway, it's really a great time," Rage said. "So, did you want to go?" Emi was quiet for a while.

"Yes," she said shyly. Rage grinned.

"Great," He started. "Do you know the convenience store near here?"

"Yeah," Emi responded.

"Okay then. Is it all right to meet there around six tomorrow?" Emi agreed again, and Rage left for home. He was tired, and, after all, his nose did hurt.

Emi could barely sleep Friday night. She had gone home to the usual 'how was your day', and responded with a rare 'great'. Shortly after dinner, Emi turned on the TV in hopes of trying to focus something, and the time moving faster.

To her dismay, both her overruled by her excitement from her date tomorrow. And after tossing and turning in her sleep, waking up early (several times), and staring at the clock (too many times), the time finally came.

Unfortunately, she had passed out from lack of sleep the night before on the couch, and ended up waking up at six-seventeen in thanks to her mom shaking her, and asking if she had somewhere to go.

Now Emi was running down the street with her hat thrown on top of her head and checking her watch every few feet. It took her fifteen minutes to finally reach the corner store. The sun was setting to her left, and made her squint a little in her left eye.

Rage was nowhere around.

What if he already left because you fell asleep? She thought this and multiple other thoughts in the two-minute time period she was alone before Rage came out of the corner store holding two drinks.

"Oh," said Rage, holding a soda in each hand. "I went in the store ten minutes ago because I figured we could use a drink,"

Emi laughed a little to herself, feeling stupid for assuming Rage ditched her after only a few minutes of being late. She took the drink, and thanked him, while noticing what he was wearing outside of school.

Rage was wearing camouflage cargo pants, a black shirt, and a red vest-coat over it. After a minute of small talk to get to know each other a little, someone called out Rage's name. Rage looked down the street where the sun was setting and smiled and waved.

Emi squinted to see who he was motioning at, and saw two figures running towards them. One was tall, taller then Rage, and the other was about the same height as her. They looked like a boy and a girl, a couple or siblings judging by how close they were together.

"Emi," started Rage as the two figures got closer. "This is Akira," He motioned towards the taller one, with black hair. "And that's his girlfriend, Yuni," He motioned towards the girl. They both waved as Rage said their names.

Judging from their appearance, Emi would have assumed that they were going to a formal. Akira had black pants and a black vest fastened together over a white business shirt. The top of a tie was just visible above the vest. He looked like he was wearing a suit without the jacket.

Yuni had long blond hair tied into two pig-tails that reached her waist. She wore a black short-sleeve that puffed out a little over the shoulders. A large bow was tied just under her collar, and a matching skirt reached to just above her knees. Her laced boots seemed only to match with the formality of the outfit that went perfectly with Akira's.

"Well, shouldn't we go before it gets too late?" asked Yuni. The others nodded, and Akira led the way with Yuni right next to him. Rage trailed behind with Emi.

Akira stared up at the large sign over the double-door entrance. In bold letters, and all caps, it read Dance Dance Revolution. Akira never got tired of it, and it apparently awed the girl who Rage had introduced as Emi. Akira smiled a little as he noticed that Emi was half hidden behind Rage. Whether she did it intentionally or not, Akira found it kind of amusing. She was about to meet a lot of people that could easily come off as strange.

The doors swung open easily, and a heavy beat filled his ears. The club itself was full of its usual customers, and most of them were still strangers to Akira. He did know a good group however, and Rage's friend from another school hung out here too. Speaking of which, Rage seemed to have found him.

"Izam!" Rage said in greeting, as he clapped hands with a teenager around his age. Izam wore beige cargo pants, work boots, and a red shirt. Under that was a black long-sleeve, and he wore a beanie on his head that pushed his hair down and made it stick out the sides. The two looked like brothers.

"Hey, Rage," Izam looked over Rage's shoulder at Emi, who was looking around. "Who's she?" asked Izam. Emi turned red.

"Oh, Emi?" asked Rage. Emi's face grew hot. "She's my friend," Izam nodded, and said he had something else to do. He took off across the dance floor towards the other side where he talked to someone else.

Emi decided to sit down at one of the tables. Rage was about to join her when an annoying voice picked up.

"Excuse you," said a girl standing in front of the table. She had a black cat hood, a small shirt, and gloves that made her hands look like she was wearing mittens. She had a skirt that seemed to stick out about two feet in every direction, and purple boots that buttoned up to her mid thigh. Her skin was a little pale, and her face looked kind of flat. "You're sitting at my table,"

Apparently, she expected Emi to move. She was more surprised when she didn't. "There are plenty of other tables," Emi said in a collected tone. "Why don't you sit at one of them?"

The girl snorted. "I don't need this from a brat like you," she growled, and walked across the room, holding a drink in one hand. Rage came over and sat down across from Emi.

"That was one of the Zukin sisters," he explained. "They all wear something along the same lines of each other, but vary them due to how they all look alike. We call her Evil-Zukin since she's such a bitch,"

Emi tried to hold in a laugh. Akira sat down at the square table with Yuni, and they both saw Emi with her hands over her mouth. It wasn't working. The laugh was going to come out one way or another.

Silently, but unanimously, they decided just to spend the evening ordering some food and talking. None of them were really in the mood to dance, and Emi didn't really want to embarrass herself in front of her new friends.

As the evening moved on, more people seemed to show up. At ten-thirty, Emi finally found the clock.

"I have to go," she announced. "I need to be home by eleven and its about a twenty minute walk from here."

"Alright," said Rage standing up. "Then I'll walk you home," Emi blushed. Akira and Yuni said their goodbyes, and Rage and Emi left the club.

"That place didn't look too bad," Emi said. Rage smiled a little. "Except for Zukin,"

Rage laughed a little. "You should be more descriptive then that. Someone could think you're talking about the nice one,"

"There's a nice sister?" asked Emi, keeping her eyes on the sidewalk ahead of her.

"Yep," responded Rage. "There are four," Emi looked shocked. "Only two of them are twins. The other two are just sisters. Ones nice, one is kind of in between, one is stuck up, and then there's the total bitch. But you're familiar with her already."

Emi laughed a little. "So, why are there so many of them?"

"Izam says that the dad wanted a son, but after four attempts, he kind of gave up," Rage explained. "But of course, Izam's opinion isn't very valid in any matter,"

Emi smiled this time. She was almost depressed when they were standing in front of her house. Rage turned to face her. "Well, see you in school on Monday," Emi nodded, and turned to walk inside the house, seeming unable to talk.

"Maybe we could do it again some time," Rage called after her. Emi's face turned a deeper red then any other time this night, and she managed a shaky nodded before really running into her house.

Rage cursed a little. Why didn't she say anything back to him? What the hell did he do wrong? He grumbled for a few minutes as he walked down the street. Then he thought of something. What if she had only been quiet because she was nervous, or shy again? Rage smiled, and felt dumb for getting angry over nothing again.

But Akira was right. It did earn him that name.

Emi closed the door behind her. She felt a weird mix of nerves and happiness in her stomach. Maybe Alice had been right though. Maybe she was getting worked up over nothing again. She liked Rage, and there was a chance that he liked her.

Emi smiled. Maybe high school wouldn't be so bad.

Okay, that's the end of the first chapter. Please review and I hope you enjoyed. If you found the story kind of slow, it will definitely pick up as it moves on. And this isn't just about Rage and Emi. The first chapter just focused on them. Thanks for reading.