I'm Catty, and welcome to my first ever phanfiction. This is Rayla--
Hi there! (waves) You brought cookies, right?
Yes, Rayla, they brought cookies. Rayla is one of my main muses, and one of the main characters in this story--the hyper Phanatic main character...
Ahem.
Oh, right. (points to Azzie) That's my other main muse, Miazma--but everyone around here calls her 'Azzie', lest they be subjected to a rather painful death. Especially if she's deprived of coffee. She is the other main character, the hyper Phanatic's sarcastic inventress older sister.
Better believe it, kid. I'm also the only sane person here...
Loathing PotO does not make you sane!
Shut up.
Somebody needs a nappy...
Catty, I do NOT need a nappy!
Temper, temper. And just so the lawsuit gods don't come after me, I don't own Phantom of the Opera. I do, however, own Rayla and Miazma Djian. And Erik, Christine, Raoul and Carlotta's toddler versions, but their adult versions belong to Gaston Leroux/Andrew Lloyd Webber.
Enjoy the story!
C.F. & Co.
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"RAYLA!"
A college-age girl stood in front of Ballad Middle School, looking impatient. Her glasses were slightly askew, and she wore a navy blue hoodie with Batman pajama bottoms. One foot had on a high-top sneaker; the other was clad in a bunny slipper. There was a pencil behind one of her ears, electrical wires around her neck, and a half-dissected computer keyboard under her arm.
"RAY, GET OUT HERE!"
The young woman scowled. Her younger sister's chorus practice had ended fourty-five minutes ago, she had already gone to the library and checked the ladies' room, so what could be keeping her? It was six o'clock on a school night, for God's sake. And to boot, it was raining with a vengeance. She cursed under her breath as she pulled the hood of her sweatshirt over her chestnut, seafoam-streaked mane, already turned black and forest green by the downpour.
I'm gonna kill that kid, she thought fervently as she uttered one last, "RAYLA CHRISTIANNA DJIAN!"
Suddenly from inside the school came the sound of a voice, slightly off key, like a ribbon of light weaving its way through a dark tunnel.
"Nightime quickens, sharpens each sensation. Darkness stirs and wakes imagination. Silently the senses...abandon their defenses..." The voice stopped short as its source--a tallish, brown haired girl in a black T-Shirt and a denim skirt--stood in the doorway of the school.
"Rain!" Rayla yelped. "Again! Ugh...coming, Azzie..." The seventh-grader paused to put on a red jacket and grab her backpack, then sprinted down the cement steps to where her older sister waited.
"Where were you? This is the third week running that I've had to come pick you up from school, Ray. Do you have any idea what time it is?" Miazma "Azzie" Djian demanded.
"Er...can I get back to you on that?" replied Rayla sheepishly, one violet-streaked braid hanging in her face.
"Let me see the book," Azzie huffed.
Reluctantly, her sister handed over a weatherbeaten copy of Phantom of the Opera, taken from the school library.
"Haven't you read Phantom seventeen times already?" she asked, waving the paperback in front of Ray's face.
"Sixteen and a half, actually, but what's it to you?"
"Your obsession is getting unhealthy. You eat, sleep, and breathe Phantom--don't think I don't hear you up in your room at night," Azzie added, giving Rayla a warning look.
"Madmoiselle, I highly doubt that sitting in your room until three in the morning, sipping coffee and dissecting portable CD players, as YOU do, is any healthier than my fetish," Ray snapped.
Azzie gave her a death glare. "That's none of your buisness!"
The sisters continued to argue as they walked down Mora Avenue in the rain, cars speeding by and sending up miniature tidal waves from the gutters. A distant rumble of thunder could be heard as the solid sheets of water came crashing down. Azzie and Rayla were getting absolutely drenched, and there was nothing they could do about it.
After much shouting and squabbling, they finally arrived at 235 Densmore Place, an antique monstrosity of a house, with baby blue chipped paint, a white awning, and old lawn chairs on the front porch. Rayla stormed up the front steps, followed by her older sister. Azzie stalked into the kitchen while Rayla climbed the winding staircase, further and further up, until she reached her bedroom. From the kitchen, Azzie could hear a resounding SLAM!
The chestnut-haired girl threw herself onto her bed--the old matress, from their grandmother's house, that still reeked of tea and tobacco smoke, and a falling-apart wooden frame, covered by floral sheets and a black duvet--and screamed into a pillow. Why did Azzie have to be so...so...overprotective! It drove her insane...she flopped onto her back, staring at the various Phantom pictures covering the right wall.
"I blame you," she whispered with a wry smile at the picture of the Phantom. Sighing, she rolled off of the bed and reached underneath for her pencils and paper. Time for the bane of her existence...the dreaded thing known only to mortals as homework.
Azzie grimaced at the contents of the refrigerator. Half a head of lettuce, a practically empty jar of mayonnaise, something green and bloblike that looked like it had once been meat, and a Kid Food Happy Peppy Healthamafied Educational TV Dinner. (a/n: Ew...soy cubes...-shudders-) The only decent thing in the fridge was a bag of Triple-Dip Chocolate Swoon Doughnut Holes, one of the most chocolatey, sugar- and caffiene-filled, calorific snack foods in the history of musekind. She reached for the bag and put it it on the cluttered kitchen table.
As her forest green eyes scanned the table, they alit on something purple and silver, something that looked oddly like an eggbeater. "Yes," she whispered, fingering the object. She'd worked on it for two years in college, before the accident happened and she became Rayla's guardian. It was her pet project, an experiment she'd tried, a chance she'd taken. If it had worked, she could have brought the dead to life, brought the great ones to earth again. She could have asked the genii of history about all the things she'd always wondered...brought Mom and Dad back so that she and Rayla could have a family, be a family again. And all she'd need was a picture or two, to turn back the hands of the clock and make her life complete...but the Miazma Djian Idea Animation Generator, or M-DIAG, was just a crazy dream, poured into spare parts from a child's toy. Azzie placed it back on the table next to Rayla's favorite DVD, blinking back tears as she went to the stairway to call Rayla down for supper.
Her sister greeted her with a hardly audible,"What are we having?"
"Doughnut holes," replied Azzie nonchalantly. Rayla's face lit up as she sprinted down the curved staircase, and Azzie couldn't help but beam back.
The two sisters sat down at the table, each reaching into the paper bag for fistfuls of the rich, chocolatey treat. Ray's jaws were working at the speed of light--she was sugar-dependent, after all. Azzie managed to snatch a few when Ray's hands weren't in the bag. They ate their dinner in relative silence, broken only by Rayla's humming and the pounding of the rain outside. They both plunged hands into the bag at the same instant, both knowing the terrible fact as soon as they locked eyes; there was only one doughnut hole left.
"You can have it," Rayla muttered, a michevious smile spreading across her face, "if you can catch it!" Instantly she snatched the bag, empty save one, and sped off at the speed of sugar, down the hall.
Azzie's eyes grew wide with shock. It took her a second to react. She spluttered for a moment, but recovered quickly, and was soon on Rayla's tail, chasing her down the hall.
Ray was laughing by now, as she made a hairpin turn at the bathroom door, circling back toward the kitchen. Azzie spun around as she followed her to the kitchen, unable to keep the huge grin off of her face. It was probably the sugar, but something had just brought their mood right up.
She slid a little on the tiled floor in her cotton socks, but Ray regained her balance quickly snd sprinted into the kitchen, clambering toward the table, Azzie hot on her trail.
Rayla climbed up onto a chair, and lept onto the table...losing her balance, and falling directly on top of the M-DIAG.
All of a sudden, a blast of mauve light engulfed the DVD, giving the entire room an unnatural glow. The colour off the cover of Phantom of the Opera(2004 version) disinegrated until the disque itself disappeared in some unknown wormhole in the space-time continumum.
When the light finally dimmed, four unique little children, each about three years old, sat in the living room. Four unique little faces--one masked, one innocent, one impish, and one oddly feminine(although, it was clearly a boy's face) stared in bafflement. Four unique little pairs of eyes scanned the room, unknown to them, then squeezed
shut as their four unique little faces screwed up and they began bawling at the top of their four unique little pairs of lungs.
Fearful of what she'd find, Rayla hopped down from the table and opened the door a crack.
"Azzie," she whimpered, "I think we have a problem..."
