Chapter 2: Key and Gate

"ED!"

"Eek!" Ed squeaked mousily, dropping whatever he was holding on at the time—a spoon, to outside viewers—and scrambled around to face his furious younger sister, with Jimmy hiding timidly just behind the kitchen doorway, unsure if he should watch or interfere for once.

It's always the first option he picked.

"ED! Get your stupid friends out of my room! We were playing tea party when THEY had butted in!" Sarah barked furiously, jabbing a stout finger right up the ceiling, where Ed had twitched his ears slightly and had picked up what she was complaining about.
Raucous laughter shook the floorboards slightly as Edd tried desperately to silence Eddy down. Ed silently nodded unwillingly and started for the stairs. Just right off his left:

"Eddy! Hush! For goodness' sake, Sarah's going to get irate again!" Edd chided, trying his absolute best to restrain him.
"Come on guys, Sarah's going to get jittery and tell Mom!" Ed whimpered nervously. Reluctantly pulling Edd and Eddy out of her room and tossing them—Ed himself included—right out the mercifully opened window.

Luckily, they falled right onto a large leafy shrub just off to the side of the barbecue grill so no damage was done besides maybe a leaf and branch stuck in a crevice or two and a small handful of scratches scattered throughout the exposed skin.

""Ed! You idiot, what the heck were you doing?!" Eddy barked furiously, Ed quailed slightly under his angered stare, "We were having a great time in there until you decided to lob all of us out!"

"If you mean 'we' by 'you', then yes, yes you were," Edd harshly told his stocky friend, "But none of us were very excited when you decided to raid Sarah's room for recreational enjoyment like some kind of barbaric marauder."
Ed had none-too-gently dislodged himself from the pile as shown when his two shorter friends were sent crashing onto the ground, "S-Sorry guys, but Sarah told me that she would tell Mom what happened if I didn't do what she said!"
Eddy scoffed, his former anger had started to ebb away massively, "Yeah, well just move to some kinda abandoned wasteland in a Japanese place where monsters and gods live or some gunk like that, then Sarah wouldn't have to get on your butt so many times."

"That's oddly specific Eddy." Edd commented with a thinly raised eyebrow.

"Whatever," Eddy waved off, "I'm goin' back to my shindig for some overdue magazine readings, holler if you need me or whatever."

"Ed and Edd had watched on as Eddy retreated back into the backdoor at his house just across the streets, knowing that he had merely retreated into his room.

Ed silently stared off at the woods, unaware that Edd had already left him to his own devices when he had said something about experiments. Ed still stared on, not even sure what he's going to do now.

Wait, what was Ed going to do today again?

Oh right. The woods.

Ed lightly dashed off towards the dark canopy of trees in his strange little march; where he had leaned back so much that his back was nearly perpendicular to his lower half and his upper body gently bobbed up and down to the rhythm of his walk.

Crisscrossing streams of light had hit Ed as he leisurely strolled through the woods with a mellow smile on his lips, cheerful and blissfully unaware of his surroundings.

Eventually Ed had gotten so distracted of, well, everything—ranging from what was he doing, to what he'll find, to what even he ate for the past day— to the point he had subconsciously wandered in so deep into the woods to the point that it was so dark Ed couldn't even see three yards in front of him.

Frightened, but nonetheless adventurous, Ed continued onwards no matter how little he sees. Eventually, it had gotten so dark that Ed felt like his visions might have been stolen away, leaving him in darkness with only four senses to work with. Trembling in a strange combination of coldness, fear and anticipation, Ed had outright broke into a run, dashing through shadows, getting faster the longer he stood in the darkness.

Eventually, after what felt like days of darkness, the leaves above Ed's head had gradually thinned out and let more light through. After a minute of running, Ed finally slowed down to pant for air, breathing slowly in and out to feel less winded.

When Ed felt better, he gently stood up to see what was behold in front of him. His vision was still dark and dim, but bright enough for Ed to make out the shape and color of what he was seeing.

Two pairs of faded vermillion pillars placed far apart from each other, with the distance in between being somewhat comparable to the size of a garage door. The height is also impressive; about the size of 17 feet if he was a judge. Ed also observed two straight beams, one going through the two pillars and one longer laying on the pillars, as a part of the structure. But the part that had Ed's intrigue the most was the pair of wooden doors in between the pillar.

It was slightly greenish, like a rusted bronze in color with a faded brown door handle on each door. Strange, intriguing glyphs and scriptures were engraved all around the doorframe, capturing Ed's attention further. A hollow whisper of wind was heard emanating from the door, hinting at what secrets the gates hide.

Ed stepped closer to the gate, feeling as though he had made the discovery of the millennia, and stood right in front of the doors. He tried pried opened the doors with nothing but his hands, only for it to slip away from the wood. Ed had tried to push the doors inwards, but it felt like he was pushing a mountain instead. Not a single ounce of even Ed's herculean strength helped opening the gate; much to Ed's subconscious disbelief.

Resigned to the fact he couldn't make the gates budge, Ed shoved his hands into his pockets and sighed dramatically. But before he left the gates, Ed's fingers slip onto something again; it was the exact same texture and shape of the object in Ed's backpack just yesterday.

Surprised, he pulled it out of his pockets and examined it closely.

It was a broken twig, maybe about the thickness of his pinky finger. It was as long as his hand and still had little branches on it, with small green leaves and everything. The main eye catching feature, though, were at the bottom of the twig; it was the notched teeth of a skeleton key, but instead of being carved and glued onto the stick, it looked as though it had merely been a natural growth of the twig. A white thin ribbon was tightly wound around just below the little branches like a makeshift handle of sorts, with two zigzagging paper streamers protruding just off the top of the white ribbon.

Overall, it had the appearance of a key. Granted, a strange one that had no locks Ed knows that it can open, but a key nonetheless.

As Ed looks at it longer and longer, he starts to wonder what it could unlock, and as he does so, Ed had subconsciously turned his head towards the strange red gate. Staring back and forth to the key and back, Ed glances towards the gate one final time before rushing towards the wooden doors.

Like his hands were guided by a supernatural being, Ed found the keyhole almost like second nature and effortlessly twisted the key into unlocking door.

Once Ed pulls the key back out of the keyhole, the door gave one chilling creak, and another before gently sweeping inwards, releasing a gale of wind blowing outside to hit Ed on the way out as it does so, showing a deep dark, shadowy corridor, filling Ed with excitement.

Ed stared deep into the doorway, excitement building up under his skin. He turned around once, twice, before steeling himself for the journey.

He took one step inside, another and another, before Ed Christensen disappeared into the door.

Jack's Notes

Note to self: I hate typing on the iPad sometimes. If you're wondering why, it's because whenever I type stuff on it, it'll convert to p style="text-align: left;" or something like that. With that said though, here's chapter two of my story! If some of you are wondering how Ed knows about Gensokyo's legend, I'll explain that in a chapter or two, you just gotta be patient.

Well, until then, bye bye!