Author's Notes: Ok, so I wont make this into a one-shot. I kind of enjoy making this story anyway. Sorry for the boring small usage of vocabulary, I haven't been myself lately.
Anyways...
thanks rukaru-romance. passion (btw there's no space in her name, fanfiction just wont allow me NOT to put space) and CarJanLucy for the reviews, you guys really made my day =)
ok on with whatevers on this chapter...
Brown chestnut pigtails skimmed against the cold morning wind of the all-familiar fall season. Her eyes of mere equivalent color to her hair, watered at each possible corner as it observed the burning house.
Flames bulging out of all the exits, ember exploding from the roof and smoke sizzling into everyone's noses, it's ghastly stench swarming inside their lungs. The untamable element ate up everything it touched, grazing its extreme heat against the cement, wood and brick.
People were coming to help extinguish the fire from afar directions but it so happens that a class seemed to be passing by the facility, experiencing the tremendous explosion and theorizing among themselves an answer to the unresolved problem of who would be unlucky enough to be inside that building at that exact particular moment.
A certain girl knew of course...
that her bestfriend was inside at the time of disaster.
She knew of the new invention her bestfriend had spent nights before trying to master. She knew that her bestfriend would skip class and fake an excuse, just to finish that machine in time for a particular untold deadline. Her chest grew warm at the idea for she had no doubt of who was inside...
"Hotaru!" Mikan yelled, darting forward towards the building, allowing her tears to fall sideways at the advance movement of her body.
"Mikan, don't go in there!" Narumi ordered, alarmingly lunging at the girl. Mikan felt two large arms stop her from playing on her attempted save as she relaxed into her teacher's hold on her, both for protection and comfort.
"the fire department will be here soon, we'll just have to wait" he whispered, reassurance clear in his voice.
"please...don't do the same mistake you did before" Mikan blinked at what her teacher had said, wondering if it was just her imagination or did he just sound so desperate to keep her there?
Putting that aside, she questioned about his plead 'don't do the same mistake you did before',
remembering the night she had ran into another burning house and saved a tape from being destroyed for the sake of a little kid who couldn't sleep without it. She would've been killed if Hotaru hadn't been there to save her.
"Hotaru..." the brunette muttered quietly, dispersing her view of the framework. Narumi let go of his embrace and separated himself a good distance from her, knowing she needed some time for herself, alone of course.
"oh dear, Hotaru must still be in there" his students began conversing
"nah, she was called in sick today, remember?"
"but Hotaru would never miss a class even if she was sick"
"Ruka was sick and he missed class"
"it's different with Hotaru"
"uh...maybe she was tired"
"tired? Tired of what?"
"I dunno, studying?"
"why would Imai be tired of that?"
"I always get tired of that, ooh! ooh! maybe Hotaru was just sleeping inside there and then ...BOOM!"
"oh dear, what if she really was in there when-"
"ok ok guys, let's stop talking about Hotaru actually being inside there, ok?" Narumi cut in fast, feeling Mikan's uncomfortable aura at the subject.
She was constantly shivering...not because she was cold but because she was scared. Her reason for almost everything was slowly dying.
Her reason for running away from home.
Her reason that she entered Alice Academy.
Her reason that she was presently alive now.
Of course, she wasn't thinking of suiciding herself, it was just because most of the time it was Hotaru saving her from fatal situations at the beginning, middle and end of her first year in Alice Academy.
She inhaled the wind as calmly as she could manage, not caring if it still carried particles of smoke from the fire now and then. She was just anxious to be reunited with 'her reason'
...with her bestfriend.
The teacher sighed
"its times like this, that I wish Natsume was in class today"
"oh but Natsume-kun is in the hospital right now, sensei" Sumire reported, happy that she was able to speak for her idol.
"yes yes, I know but if he was here, he could help with the fire somehow" Narumi continued, flashing a look at the bright red flames hungrily fingering the entrance of the building. He suddenly heard the sound of sirens coming in louder, standing on his tiptoe, he searched for the source of the noise.
"ah, here comes the fire department now...now all we have to do is just-" he stopped abruptly, something was wrong. He missed a student.
No not Hotaru.
Or Natsume.
Or Ruka for that matter.
Panic slid down his body like an electric shock in his adult nervous system as he saw the missing student running towards the fire.
"Mikan!"
"cough...cough...Hotaru!" Mikan cried, as the smoke entered her only two breathing entrances and centered inside her throat.
She quickly grabbed her favorite Pokka dotted handkerchief from her skirt pocket and covered her nose and mouth with it, all the while she was frantically scanning the first floor through the light roaring flames for her bestfriend, ignoring the calls the class exclaimed to her for her utmost return.
"Hotaru!" Mikan's shouts grew louder as she became more and more desperate at each failing attempt. Her shoes had already picked up some hitchhiking fire bits which slowly began to sink into the fabric as she moved forward.
Suddenly, the silhouette of a person appeared from inside one of the many rooms contained on the first floor hallway. Mikan ran towards the person, praying that it was her dearly beloved friend and not the enemy that started the humungous ember attack.
For all she knew, it could have been Natsume who began the whole thing but then again the cold arrogant pervert should be at the hospital right now or 'disastrous' methods would take place to help him survive, or so she heard. The reason for his jailing in the nursing home was hidden from the students but Mikan was sure that all of the teachers knew about it. She'd have to beg Narumi later to feed her rising curiosity but right now she was in a terrible position to even think that.
She huffed in disappointment as she faced Hotaru's robot look-alike of her (which appeared to be the silhouette) but switched emotions right after seeing the unusual change of her look.
Half of her entire layer of skin was slowly starting to peel off, revealing hard metal on the other side, Mikan's supposedly artificial pigtails were cut from the exposure to fire and dark inner liquids sprayed out from her electronic abdomen.
"Amanatsu! What happened to you?" Mikan stared horrified at the appearance.
She reached out her hand to the peels, disbelieving it's existence. As her fingertip came in contact with it though, she felt a burning sensation run through her palm and quickly withdrew her hand, letting out a short squeal. The robot though didn't mind Mikan's small burn, there was no time.
"Mikan-chan! Hurry! Ruka-san is-"
"Luca-pyon? But where's Hotaru?"
"yes yes Hotaru is-" Amanatsu suddenly toppled onto the ground, visible electricity sparking throughout the robot's metal. Punishment of remaining too close to the high heat levels of the living ember.
"Amanatsu!"
"Mikan-chan...second floor...hurry..." the robot muttered before falling unconscious. Mikan looked with deep concern and worry at Amanatsu, she wanted to help her but it would be difficult to do since she can't lay a finger on the metal without getting burned. She didnt give a quick thought to her plan, it was all instinct.
She carefully stretched out the handkerchief she previously held to her nose as far as it possibly could and slipped her hands under Amanatsu's back, the cloth gloved her hands. Luckily, Amanatsu wasnt heavy at all. She then ascended her way upstairs, holding in her breath along the way, avoiding flying debris and grazing fire and making sure the robot didn't fall off her hands.
She soon found a body lying on the floor, one look though and she recognized him at once.
"Luca-pyon!" she dropped the robot on a part of the floor certain to be in no sign of a fire, retrieved her warm handkerchief and went to Ruka's aid, bending down and holding the boy in her arms, wiping off baby flames from his half-engulfed coat and shorts. A thought struck her and she instantly placed the back of her hand on his forehead.
"he has a fever, this isn't good!" Mikan panicked, adding that to her mental list of problems.
It consists of: Amanatsu close to dying, Ruka sick at a terrible time, Hotaru missing and a burning house willing to kill them all.
"Hotaru..."
"Luca-pyon, your awake?"
"Mi...Mikan?"
"uhuh...come on, Luka-pyon we have to..."
"Mikan, Look out!" Mikan's eyes widened in shock as she saw a burning wooden beam fall from the ceiling, aiming directly at her and Ruka.
A pot full of boiling chemicals was whistling its finished product just as Hotaru (still controlled) nailed a metal tube to the main invention.
It was as small as an average house lamp, having taken the form of a giant gray egg with a leg hatching out of it.
Hotaru quickly turned the boiler off and the sound ceased. She lifted up the pot of liquids and dumped a portion of it onto the in-progress machine. She smirked at the improvement
"this is almost too easy"
"so how's the new invention going, Hotaru?" came a girl's pleasant voice.
"it's an absolute success, Nonoko" Hotaru replied, not minding to say 'thank you' since the materials were all from her personally.
Through Hotaru's memory, the spirit was able to locate the girl's name and address plus the information of her alice regarding chemicals. That, of course, was necessary for finishing the invention. The spirit was lucky though that Nonoko had skipped afternoon classes to finish one of her projects, resulting her to miss the tragic scene back at Hotaru's research building and gifting him the chance to operate on her chemicals.
"if you need any more help just call, ok?" the dark haired girl smiled sweetly before leaving the room to attend to her unfinished project.
"Tsk, your help won't be needed anymore" Hotaru murmured, leaning down to a low hole in the back of the machine and trying to connect an inner wire to another.
"what's your plan?" the real Hotaru asked from inside her own mind, her eyes puffy from the recent crying she did.
"I plan to create a machine that will be powerful enough to destroy the world and the being's living in it"
"it won't work"
"what was that, brat?" the spirit grumbled, stopping his tries to connect the wire.
He was never patient with her, Hotaru presumed
"even if you succeed in making the machine... you would still be in an Academy full of people with 'special abilities' we call Alices. Even if you tried, there's no way you can succeed with people that could stop it's work"
"I've already went through every alice user your memory knows and fixed the machine to be immune when it comes to their attacks. Only one person would be able disrupt my plans"
"who might that be?" the spirit smiled evilly at Hotaru's question, it made her sound absolutely gullible.
"you'll see"
Author's Notes: longer than most of the other chapters in this story, i realize. Hope you enjoyed it though... if not i can recommend tons of better Rukaru stories that you could read instead, one that I really recommend is:
'You Had It All Wrong' by rukaru-romance. passion (again there's no space in her name)
its amazing! she finally updated more chappies, hehe. Ehm...sorry off topic
oh and lastly review pls