Title: Phantom of the Opera 2
Series: Movie: Phantom of the Opera (2005)
Summary: Basically the story retold almost 135 years later. Perhaps Christine Daai wasn't his soul mate?
A/N: I don't own the Phantom or any of those related characters. They belong to Andrew Lloyd Webber...actually, they are Gaston Leroux's characters. Everyone else, however, belongs to me.
Oh, and a special note, this is basically a first draft, which I am posting to see what everyone thinks and suggests. Thank you!
Rating: PG-16 (for slight language, sensual ness, and frankly, everyday life that no one should worry about until they're a teenager anyways)

----Prelude-----

It was a night of blistering heat, of fearful cries, of tongues of pain. The inky black darkness was punctured by flames which lashed out from the Grand Opera House. Word in passing was that the famous Opera Ghost had made a disastrous appearance in the middle of Don Juan, sending the exquisite glass chandelier crashing down upon the seats and igniting the entire house ablaze. People outside the majestic stone steps gasped and cried in both soulful pain and fear. Wide eyes reflected the damage like glass windows into the crowds' souls. After the smoldering and damaged house was finally put out, there was nothing that gave clue to the mysterious ghost's whereabouts.
One hundred Thirty-five years later, and hundreds of miles across a vast sea, a woman just turning twenty awoke from her fitful slumber with tears etching down her pale cheeks.

----Ch 1-----

"Yo, Ange'!" An annoyingly bright voice, whose only rival was the sun streaming across her squinted eyes, pierced the serene silence that was known as the 'peace before the day starts' moment of her morning. "Do you want anything before we go? Ange'? Annnnnnnnnnnnnngel...come on!" A rap on the door's wooden frame caused her to bury her face deeper into the pillow and groan. "Come on already! Get up! The plane leaves in a hour and a half...we don't want to be late!" The pregnant pause was followed by the sounds of feet padding across worn carpeting, a radio system being fiddled with, the loading of a CD. "Child of the wilderness/ Born into emptiness/ Learn to be lonely/ Learn to find your way in darkness..." A woman's sorrowful voice filled up the room. She slowly withdrew her face from the folds of the pillow's cold and cottony refuge to stare hazily at her overly awake, happy companion.

"Get up."

"Don't you know it's dangerous to wake someone up too early with depressing music?" She asked groggily. Her roommate, a twenty-one woman of five-foot-two with a wine red pert haircut, just rolled their eyes.

"Get. Up." Was all the friend said as an egg timer went off. Rubbing at her eyes, she watched her companion race out of her bedroom.

"Seriously. That most likely could lead to deep depression, suicidal tendencies and other such nonsense or scientific whoo-haw..." She continued on loudly, for the benefit of her friend in the kitchenette, swinging her legs out over the edge of the mattress and onto the carpet.

"Crystal...seriously..."

"Get up or I'll find your hell-awful cat and throw it on you!" Was the only reply. She smiled to herself and ran her fingers through her long and wild, bed-headed, dark-blond nest of hair. As she dragged her limp form from the tangled sheets, she could hear Crystal happily whistling a broken tune. She groaned to herself and got up on wobbling legs, groping for the back of her chair to steady herself.

"It has to be illegal to be that happy in the morning..." She muttered, stretching up onto her toes and drawing a size-too-large pair of dark blue jean (with a few hole-rips here and there) on over her legs. Snagging an out-stretched scrunchy, she combed her fingers through her hair once more and tied it back in a loose ponytail. Passing the mirror without a glance, she shuffled down the hall towards the smell of frying eggs.

"Angel, are you honestly going to wear that on the plane?" Crystal asked skeptically, eyeing the friend's ruffled tank top and the jeans which were practically falling off her butt.
"Nooo...I was planning to wear this dishonestly onto the plane." She sneered, plopping down into the first chair she collided with, laying her forehead on the cool plate in front of her. In response to Crystal's sigh, she muttered into the empty plate "No, I was going to wear something else entirely. Something nice."

"Nice for you means something clean, casual and free from paint stains for the next hour or two." She smiled at the last part of Crystal's comment and lifted her head in response to "Egg?"

"Thank you...and I promise to wear something nice-nice, like a button-down dress shirt or whatever." She sighed contently and picked up the fork. Crystal sat down across from her friend and smiled.

"Thank you. Now, eat up. The plane takes off in an hour or so, and the trip will take at least three hours."

"Couldn't get something shorter?" She asked, raising her eyebrow. Crystal laughed.

"With enough seats for all of us in one shot! Ha!" She smiled at her friend's zealous laughter. When it died down long enough for some eggs to be eaten, a conversation arose. "Mmm...why the comment? Thought you liked flyin'."

"I do. Just was teasing. Everything is--" She paused to swallow a bite of egg, then continued.
"--sorry. Everything is so high-speed, internet speed, techno-whatever these days..." Crystal nodded, knowing full well that the companion was happy to take things slowly.

"You are so old-fashion." Crystal teased, receiving a grin.

At the Airport

"Keep it together people!" The voice of the instructor rang out from the weave of noise, catching the twelve students' attentions. Looks were exchanged, smiles shot over the heads of other inhabitants of the airport, and the scattered students regrouped around their teacher. "Now, look. That is your terminal." The tutor pointed to the cavernous opening behind him, then handed each student a ticket.

"These are your tickets. Do not loose them, since you will be boarding in a moment or two. You twelve were selected--"

"More like volunteered willingly for." A twenty-two year old, pale with even paler blond hair and eyes like blue spun glass, whispered behind her. She smiled and nodded, shushing him.

"--for this trip. This trip is not a break from Collage, this is not a vacation or a spring break in August. This is for learning. This is for knowledge. This is for making yourself a few extra credits. Do not blow this." The instructor shot a look at the open mouth ready to comment, glaring at the pale man. "I mean it. Now, bon voyage."

"Looks like you've been busted, Marius." She laughed as the man shut his mouth, chagrined but still cocky.

"Aw---let's just board already and get this going." Marius laughed, shouldering a dark green carry-on. Nodding, she picked up her battered denim bag and followed.

"What were you going to say?" She asked, lightly touching the back of his shirt as they were jostled slightly by the boarding crowd.

"Just that it was just like a spring break, except that we were earning credits for not even being there. We could be lounging on the beach and we'd still be earning double credits! They wont know what we're doing, so it's going to party central." Marius grinned again as they took their seats. Fastening her seatbelt, she smiled to herself and prepared for the flight, drawing out a CD player and twin earbuds.

Fifteen minutes into the Flight

"Crystal! Knock it off!" Jack was shouting, his bass voice booming right behind her ear, making her wince in pain. As she turned around, the sight that met her made her wish she hadn't looked. Crystal, with wine-red hair swinging, was headbanging to some sort of music that was screaming only to the kid-like woman, silent to those around her. Jack, a rather rugged looking twenty-two year old with slicked back black hair, was unfortunate to be seated next to the British loving punk rocker. On Crystal's other side was Elisabet (whom everyone called Liz), twenty-one with black and red streaked hair cropped close to the scalp in a fuzzy halo, laughing loudly at the neighbor's antics. Without taking out her earbuds, she reached behind her seat and flipped Crystal's laptop closed. The click of the lid smacking the computer's base, followed by a screech akin to a cat being dropped into a fridge pool from the cut-off rocker, woke Marius up from his sleep. Turning back around, she merely smiled at him and went back to her CD.

The rest of the plane trip went a little more smoothly.

Landing in Paris' International Airport

Gazing around, she was only slightly less lost than her eleven companions. Not by very much, though.

"Angel...do you have any idea where we're suppose to go?" Crystal beseeched, clinging to the friend's arm for dear life. Shrugging slightly, she led the students along towards the food court, hoping to find a table big enough for them to relax for a moment and gather up their belongs. "Ange', what if we don't find this tour guide-bus-thingy before it leaves? What if we end up stuck here?" Crystal watched as the tired friend stepped up onto the plastic seat, attempting to get a bird's-eye-view of the foreign airport. "Ange'?"

"Oh, knock it off. We'll find it." She replied, glancing about. Heads everywhere, a sea of bodies, was expanding off into the horizon of gigantic glass panes and automatic doors. Suddenly, she spotted a sign that bore the French equivalence to 'Here is the bus, you dumb tourists!', making her smile. "There it is. Come on, already." She sighed, rounding up the other students and leading the way. They shoved, squirmed, scooted around, and basically swam their way through the crowd towards the bus' emblem.

"Yes! Just enough seats!" Michel crowed, the twenty-one year old with lime-green spiked hair flopping down into a patched bus seat. The ten other collage students followed his example and snagged their own seats accordingly. Gazing out the dust streaked window, her head jerked slightly as the bus went into motion, and the bright sunlight danced before her eyes.

"So, Angel, what was your paper about?" Marius asked, bumping shoulders playfully as the bus trundled along its route. Blinking to rid herself of the burning splinters that skipped behind her eyelids, she turned and raised her eyebrows in a silent question. "You know, the paper that got you this trip? Mine was about Notre Dame and its various wars or whatever. I actually BS'ed it and copied some junk off the 'net. How about you?"

"Um...I wrote about the architecture and how my family's bloodline was prone towards the arts." Past the miniature lightning bolts that still lingered, she could tell that her companion was clueless. "You know, how my Great Grandmother was a famous dance instructor, my Great Grand-Uncle was a violinist, my Great Aunt was an opera singer, my grandmother was a dancer..." She paused. "You have no idea, do you?"

"Uh-heh heh heh...no." Marius answered, attempting to inject a hint of bashfulness or apology into his voice, but failed terribly. She just sighed and turned back to the window. The rest of the bus ride was silent between the two of them.

"Hey, Ange'! Can you show Jack that picture you were inking yesterday?" Elisabet asked, turning around in the seat. Glancing up, she flashed a quick smile and reached down to pull the sketchbook out of her denim backpack. Handing it over, she took the waves of "Ooh"s and "Wow"s humbly.

"Awesome! Are you going to keep working on that?" She whipped out a metal-tipped pen as an answer, much to the friends' delight.

"Just be careful not to get any of that ink or pencil smudges on your good clothes, Angel." Crystal warned, frowning at the returned eye roll. "You're prone to that, and you know it! Just be tidy, alright? We are going to be meeting someone important or whatever for dinner, so keep it clean!"

Twenty minutes later

"Wow!" Was all that she had to say.' Wow' was all that she could say when the sight of the Grand Opera House greeted her. Hardly waiting for the ten other students to dismount, she dashed up the crumbling stone steps and threw open the great doors. Rushing inside, she slowed her pace to marvel at the intricate details in the wall plasters and other decorations. She looked up at the faded-painted ceiling, the resurrected candelabra, and she smiled. A smile full of warmth, of joy, of a sense of home. She, with those graphite smudges and pen smears across her skin, smiled.

This is the darkness again.
This is the light.
This is the Opera house.