Rhane: watching BH beating the notes of Land of A Thousand Dances on her AP US History book with two pencils Er... Hey blondie! You've got a fic to introduce! BH ignored her Riiight... Anyway... what possessed her to write this?

William: Boredom and wanting to write something in honor of the band and all the work she's put into it?

Gabriel: I'll agree with the first one...

Rhane: sigh Anyway, welcome to the prologue of Miracle Mile, the result of an anime-fangirl turned anime-crazed band geek... Jeeze, BH...

William: For those curious, this is obviously not a true story, nor is it a... how did BH phrase it?

Beelzebub: Sappy, disgusting, fluffy romantic head-over-heels love story?

William: Yes, that... This is, however, a story of growing up under impossible circumstances, of learning what life really is and learning to give everything you have into something for the first time, and of family, both in the band room and (in this case) the bar.

Rhane: And let's not forget people getting shot, romantically confused bartenders, suicide, death in general, hints of things resembling the paranormal and bizarre, angst, general confusion, and lots of laughing and crying.

William: --;;

Rhane: On with the show!!!

Miracle Mile
Prologue

"Just another step down another road in another world and another name lost to the wind."

They call it the Long Road, a mile-long stretch of absolutely nothing leading to only one thing: the Miracle Mile bar. For me, it really was the long road, the road I walked down at least twice every day to get to and from school, much less everything else. It's the road the whole town was paranoid to walk down because there was just something entirely wrong about it. It was the road where my life ended... and where it began. For me, it was the long road home.

The first time I walked down the Long Road I was thirteen, fresh out of three years of foster-homing and more than ready to make a run for it or drive my new foster so crazy he called my PO crying. No one bothered to tell me my new foster was a mid-forties single guy with an ego from hell, or that he ran a bar all night and slept all day and had no clue whatsoever as to the raising of kids. No one bothered to tell me that this guy was my only living relative, either. I walked into Miracle Mile at two in the afternoon and sat at the old bar until almost seven when Cid finally came downstairs in all his grouchy, caffeine-deprived, neon blonde-haired, chain-smoking, foul-mouthed glory. Till the day I die I will swear Cid made 5'5" by sheer force of will, and dear-freaking-God the man has never even heard of the word lung cancer.

The first time I met Cid he walked right past me and made a bee-line for the coffee pot. It took half an hour for him to notice me, and when he finally did all he managed was a rough, "What the hell're ya doin' in here?" from behind his coffee. "I'm your new foster daughter," I deadpanned, "Y'know, the one my PO called about last week? I had to pick the damn lock on your damn door get in here so I didn't freeze to death, by the way." I will never forget the stunned, horror-struck look that crossed Cid's face when I said that. "You forgot didn't you?"

And so began my relationship with the man I would later learn is my biological uncle. I'll never understand what possessed me to listen to the man, nor what possessed me to take all the idiotic crap he handed me over the next few years, but I did. After our enlightening conversation Cid shunted me upstairs and locked me in my new room (the attic, complete with boxes of junk, dust, and a bed buried under several layers of dust and other things,) and told me not to come out until morning. He was going to call the high school ("But I'm still in middle school!") in the morning to get me an appointment to sign up for my classes. "You'll have to walk down there 'cause I ain't given ya a ride down there. I gotta sleep. You're gonna walk ta school every mornin', walk home. It's only three miles, so don' complain." Me? Complain? You don't live very long like I did if you complain. So I shut my mouth and didn't leave my "room" until the next morning when Cid banged on the door and told me that I had to be at the school at noon. I had no clue about much of anything then. I still thought Miracle Mile was just another bar and that I would be out of here in a few weeks. I wonder what I would have done if someone had told me that, in walking out of the bar the next day, I was going to meet two people that would change my life forever. Sound cheesy to you? Yeah, me too.

Dedicated to the boys I've come to call my brothers, the girl I now call my sister, and the crazy people that have become my family.

Please R&R!