So sorry it took nearly two weeks to update- I lost power twice in three days, and it fried the WiFi connection, so it took even longer to get this up. To compensate, I'll try to have the next chapter up sooner. Thank you to SailorCandy for the review!
Also, my Halloween oneshot got more attention than I was expecting. If anyone is really interested in seeing it continued, please let me know in a review/PM/whatever and I'll think about it some more, but I seriously did not have further plans for it. The title for this chapter is the song "Whisper", by Evanescence.
I do not own Metal Fight Beyblade.
"Well, that was only slightly ridiculous," Hikaru unfolded her schedule and smoothed it out against the wall.
"Just let it go for now," Mei Mei spoke reassuringly. "We'll get through it."
Sophie looked over to Madoka and whispered, "And I thought our roommate was bad." The other girl nodded her agreement.
"Anyway, now that we've got ours, what're your schedules?" Hikaru looked over hers with interest.
"Um... Okay. Creative writing, algebra, chemistry, and gym on purple days; biology, physics, history, and astrology/astronomy on gold days," Madoka rattled off.
"Wait, what?" Mei Mei looked at her schedule. "Purple and gold days?"
"Yeah. The days alternate so we only have them every other day; which is good when you factor in homework," Madoka nodded.
"Especially when it comes to your homework, Madoka," Hikaru commented dryly, still peering down at her own class list. "Chemistry, biology, and physics? That's a lot of science to deal with. I've got gym with you, but then everything changes. Except for astrology and astronomy combo. I wonder what's up with that."
"I wish I had creative writing," Sophie frowned. "They've put me in speech during that period."
"Oooh, have fun with that one."
The girls continued comparing schedules as they made their way to the dining room, finding slight similarities, but it looked like they'd be spending most of the hour-and-a-half long classes separated from one another. In fact, the only class they did share all together was astrology/astronomy, which none of them really knew what to think of. It made sense, considering the school was Starlight Academy... but the astrology piece still seemed a bit off.
"Isn't astrology star signs?" Mei Mei asked.
Sophie nodded. "That's part of it, at least. Some people argue there's no scientific backing, so it's kind of odd they'd be teaching us about it in school."
"Who cares?" Hikaru shrugged. "If it's just about how the stars supposedly influence people, it shouldn't be too difficult. I'm sure not going to question a class that's bound to be an easy A."
Finally, they managed to find the dining hall, which was already full of students. The room was large and ornate, with glittering tapestries and other decorations covering the walls. A large, gleaming chandelier hung in the middle of the ceiling. There were at least twenty small tables, with white tablecloths and gold candelabra center pieces, surrounded by gold chairs. The whole set up made a few of the girls feel somewhat uncomfortable, as they weren't used to being in such lavish settings. This was more than a little overwhelming to take in.
Fortunately, their dorms rooms hadn't been nearly as extravagant, otherwise they would have been taken quite an adjustment to get used to. The dorms were much more welcoming and student-friendly. The dining hall looked as though it belonged in the home of a rich millionaire rather than a school, even if that school was a castle.
The girls went up to an enormous buffet table, then found an empty table to claim.
Mei Mei looked around at the other students, intrigued. She noted with interest the cliques that were beginning to form, particularly the one where Selen was. The group didn't look all that nice in her opinion. One of them caught her eye with a piercing stare. She sincerely hoped those other girls wouldn't be spending anytime in her dorm.
"Don't worry about it," Hikaru gave her a knowing glance. "People hardly ever spend any time in their dorm rooms, other than to sleep. That includes us. If we have to, we can always do our homework in the library or something."
"Exactly," Sophie nodded. "There's no point in stressing over something that can be fixed so easily. So we got some not so great roommates; at least we weren't completely split up."
"You're right," Mei Mei forced a smile. Still, she couldn't quite shake the feeling that something was off.
"Don't look now, but I think this place just got that much more interesting," Sophie's voice held a tinge of amusement." Mei Mei turned around to see what she was talking about.
Walking through the entryway, a large group of boys appeared.
"They must have just finished their tour," Madoka commented. "I heard they sent the boys to their dorms while the girls were on the tour earlier."
Mei Mei couldn't help but notice one of the boys, with flashy red-brown hair and dark eyes she couldn't quite identify the color of from where she sat. She wasn't the only one. Already, a small crowd of girls had started to gather around him. Mei Mei shook her head. She wasn't thinking. Sophie winked at her, noticing her interest. Mei Mei's face immediately started warming up.
"Maybe you'll have a class with him." Mei Mei pretended not to hear. Sophie laughed.
Meanwhile, the other two girls were distracted by a loud commotion. Five boys entered the room, all seemingly locked in an argument with one another. They didn't seem mad at one another, however, more like they had just known each other for a long time.
Hikaru gave them each a once over. "Green hair and white hair are the bad boys, red hair is the class clown, black hair is the troublemaker, and light blue hair is the weird one."
"What makes you say that?" Madoka asked.
"Just look at them."
Hikaru's quick analysis did appear to be somewhat accurate, but Madoka wasn't entirely convinced. The boy with white hair was hanging in the back with his arms folded, apparently bored with the whole situation. If Madoka hadn't just seen him arguing with the red-haired boy, she would have agreed one hundred percent. As it was, she really didn't know what to think of any of them. It was hard to tell from a single look across the room.
"Which one do you think is the cutest?" Hikaru whispered in her ear, causing her to jump slightly.
"I-I don't even know them!" Madoka squirmed uncomfortably.
Hikaru leaned back in her chair. "I'm thinking one of the bad boys. The weird one has some sort of charisma that sort of draws you to him, but he's not really my type."
"Well none of them are my type," Sophie wrinkled her nose. "They're all so immature, just look at them."
The other girls started laughing. Sophie looked at them.
"That's right, Sophie needs a maaann," Hikaru dragged out the word, giggling.
"Oh, stop, you know what I mean."
They finished eating, then headed up to their respective dorms. They had a full load of classes waiting for them bright and early tomorrow morning.
Sophie opened her eyes moments before the alarm went off. Madoka and Lera were still sleeping; that was fine by her. She wanted to look perfect for the first day, and waking up early was essential. First impressions were everything. She needed all the time she could get. Sophie grabbed her uniform and headed down to the girls' bathroom.
Showering gave her a few moments of peace to collect her thoughts. She'd been careful not to show it at dinner last night, but she was nervous about her classes. Not having any of her friends in the majority of them left her unsettled.
Sopphie forced herself to smile as she rinsed the shampoo her hair. She would be fine. The classes could not be that difficult, and, as they'd seen last night, there were definitely some cute guys at the school. She had that to look forward to. Putting Hikaru's comment from last night out of her mind, she considered the possibility that she might even find someone she liked.
Once she was out of the shower, she began applying her makeup. The uniform was even better than she'd initially hoped. It fit her perfectly, nothing like the baggy, unflattering sack she'd been expecting before they'd arrived. Her uniform was gold, the same as Mei Mei's.
She loved the way the shiny gold color was accented against the black. The bright color stood out, making the outfit look much lighter, even friendlier, than a simple black ensemble would have been. Sophie smiled at her reflection.
Brushing through her hair, she took one last moment to touch up her lip gloss. Something flashed behind her in the mirror. Sophie turned around.
Nobody was there.
Her eyebrows knit in confusion, trying to piece together what she had seen.
"Is someone in here?" she called, slightly uneasy.
Her ears perked up, listening for a sound. All was silent. Water could not be heard running from any of the showerheads.
Sophie peered around the bathroom stalls, even going so far as to peek beneath for any feet. Most of the curtains were open as it was. She was alone in the bathroom. It was still too early to expect many others to be awake. She'd set the alarm earlier than she typically would have to ensure she'd have plenty of time. Shaking her head, Sophie walked back over to the mirror.
A blip appeared again, this time a pale face visible for a fraction of a second. Sophie whirled around.
She was still by herself. No footsteps echoed around her.
Sophie opened her mouth to call out once more, but refrained at the last second. The door hadn't opened and she'd already confirmed no one else was in the room.
Her makeup was done. There was no need to stick around any longer.
Unnerved, Sophie grabbed her things and fled to the safety of her dorm.
Madoka was awake, but Lera was nowhere to be seen when she returned.
"Where'd she go to," Sophie gestured to the empty bed, sitting on her own and resuming brushing out her hair.
"I don't know," Madoka shook her head, yawning. "I just woke up a few minutes ago. The door was closing, so that must have been her leaving. She could have gone down to breakfast."
Sophie let out a sigh of relief. Maybe what had happened wasn't as frightening as she had been led to believe. In the stress of uprooting her life and moving to the boarding school, her imagination had merely been working overtime.
"I just had the weirdest experience in the bathroom. Or at least, I thought I did," Sophie rolled her eyes, explaining the events to Madoka. "The bathroom seemed empty, but I thought I saw someone in the mirror. It was probably Lera trying to scare me."
"I don't know…" Madoka didn't seem convinced.
"Well, what else would it have been?" Sophie grew impatient. Truthfully, the idea of considering other explanations freaked her out a little. "We all know the legends; there's no way you're the only one who looked them up before coming here. Lera obviously must have thought it would have been funny to freak us out. She's not happy rooming with us, if you couldn't already tell."
"I know that, it just seems a little extreme," Madoka conceded.
"Even if she isn't the one responsible, let's put this behind us," Sophie decided. "I probably imagined it or something. There's no way it was anything worth stressing over. I've got to finish getting ready. There's no point wasting any more time on this. We have a big day ahead of us."
Madoka was still curious, but let the subject drop. Sophie was right; they needed to focus on their classes.
There would be plenty of time to explore the mysteries of the school later.
Madoka found herself barely able to stay awake during creative writing, despite it being her first class and real introduction to school. It was too early, and the class couldn't hold her attention. The teacher droned on, something about the importance of characterization, but Madoka couldn't focus. She was too absorbed in the legends of Starlight Academy. What Sophie had told her that morning kept weighing on her mind.
Sophie may have been certain Lera had decided to take it upon herself to poke fun at her roommates, but Madoka wasn't quite inclined to agree with that conclusion. Lera hadn't been gone that long when Sophie had breathlessly run back into the room.
Madoka shook her head, trying to clear her thoughts. If she kept this up, she'd never be able to keep her grades where they needed to be. It may have only been the first day, but she couldn't risk missing anything important.
A boy with fiery hair- the same one Hikaru had labeled as the class clown at dinner the previous night- burst into the room.
"Ah, Mr. Hagane. So nice of you to join us," the teacher said dryly.
"Hey, it's not my fault! I got lost, this place is huge!" The boy took a seat next to Madoka, the only one left in the class. Madoka took the opportunity to examine him a little closer while he was distracted.
His hair was out of control- held up by a blue headband that quite obviously broke the school's dress code, not that he seemed to care- and he had bright, golden brown eyes that Madoka felt herself being drawn toward. He took out a notebook and began doodling in it, ignoring the notes the teacher had written on the board. Madoka repressed a grin. Hikaru's guess may not have been all that far off.
Putting her attention back on the teacher, Madoka finally found herself able to focus and wrote down the notes.
"Now I know you've probably heard the stories of Starlight Academy," the teacher began. Madoka's head whipped up. "Legends such as these are started in a number of ways. While the ones concerning our academy are completely unfounded, this will give you a better chance both to understand the history of your new school and learn about the creative writing process. For this assignment, I want you to research one of the legends of the academy, and write your own creative piece based off of the legend. You can work with someone else to find your legend as there are quite a few to sort through, but you must hand in separate papers."
Madoka's mind started working. This was perfect. She'd be able to find out more about the academy, maybe even the real reason behind why it closed in the first place. If they were expected to write a paper about it, then it stood to reason being at the school she would have more access to the legends than those online. The teacher was already placing a few books on a table by the door for them to look through. Where better to find information than at the school itself?
The teacher claimed none of the legends were true, but of course she would say that. Why would she tell them that the rumors of a bunch of kids being killed by a ghost girl were true when chances were no one would ever actually believe it? Besides, the legends had to have started for some reason, just as the teacher had said.
Maybe she'd even find out something about the mysterious face Sophie had seen in the mirror that morning. Sure, she'd believed it was Lera, but Madoka hadn't been convinced. Lera may not have liked her roommates, but that didn't mean she was going to try to scare them. She wouldn't gain much from it.
Madoka was so engrossed in her thoughts she barely noticed someone poking her.
She turned, only to see the red haired boy smiling at her.
"I'm Gingka," he said energetically. "Wanna work on this together?"
Madoka took a quick glance around the room, and sure enough, everyone was already grouping up for the assignment. She didn't recognize anyone else in the class, other than Selen, and there was no way she'd be willing to work alongside Hikaru and Mei Mei's less than stellar roommate.
"Sure," she said. Having a second set of eyes would definitely help in her search. "I'm Madoka, by the way."
"Cool," Ginka nodded enthusiastically. "Do you know anything about the legends in this area?"
Madoka grinned. She still had an hour left of the ninety-minute class to begin her research.
When the bell rang for lunch, Hikaru bolted out of class. Geometry was definitely not her thing. She brushed her icy-colored hair out of her eyes, then took out her map, trying to remember the route to the dining hall. A portion of the map was blocked off as areas off-limits for reasons that had yet to be explained. Hikaru could only assume they hadn't been renovated to match the school's standards. The castle was huge, but the section that made up the school only occupied roughly two-thirds of it.
Hikaru spaced out, wondering what was in those areas students were prohibited from entering. Anything could be in an old castle like this. Old artifacts could have been stored in them so nobody would damage them.
A thought struck her. Would the school still have old weapons in it? Would it be considered wrong to take original cannons from here and bring them somewhere else? How authentic was the school at this point; how much had been modernized? Her mind raced.
Hikaru's attention snapped back to her growling stomach. She stared at the map, comparing her current location to where she needed to be.
It couldn't be too far, getting to her first class immediately after breakfast hadn't been all that difficult, so it must be around here somewhere-
Suddenly the map went flying out of her hands and she lost her footing altogether. She landed, not on the floor, but something else, breaking her fall. She pushed her hair back again.
"Can you not see?" A harsh, arrogant sounding voice interrupted her thoughts.
"I-"
Hikaru shifted on to the floor. One of the boys she had seen last night was on the ground next to her, scowling.
It was one of the "bad boys", the one with white hair, accented by a splotch of red in the front. His liquid gold eyes would have been pretty, attractive even, if they weren't so harsh.
Normally, Hikaru wouldn't have taken crap from anybody, but something about the boy caused Hikaru to draw back.
"I-I'm sorry," she said, quickly getting to her feet.
The boy's eyes flickered with something unidentifiable. "Just watch where you're going," he muttered.
Hikaru started away, eager to get both away from him and to lunch.
"Wait!"
Hikaru froze.
"Don't you want this?" The boy tossed the map she had dropped into the air. Hikaru caught it before it fluttered to the ground. When she looked up, the boy had disappeared.
Shaking her head, Hikaru looked at the map.
A few minutes later, she made it to the dining hall. Sophie and Mei Mei were there, waiting for her at their table from the previous night. Hikaru grabbed a plate of food and joined them.
"Where's Madoka?" Hikaru took her seat.
"No idea," Mei Mei shrugged. "We just got here."
A group of shrieking girls caught their attention. They turned around, unsure of what to expect then collectively groaned.
"Really?" Sophie muttered.
The same boy who had been surrounded by girls the previous night had entered the room, still surrounded by his harem. The boy had his arm wrapped around one of the girls.
"So the womanizer finally picked one?" Hikaru guessed.
"Hardly," Sophie scoffed. "His name is Chao Xin. He's in my speech class. He was with another girl this morning. She's just one girl in his long line of victims. You can bet by dinnertime he'll be all over another one." Mei Mei bit her lip.
"So how are your classes?" Hikaru poked at her sandwich, taking their attention back to their lunch.
"It's school," Sophie cracked a smile. "You know how it is. Speech is boring and nobody wants to do it, biology involves cutting open dead frogs…"
"Can we please not talk about dead frogs while we're eating?" Mei Mei laughed.
"There aren't even any cute guys in my classes," Sophie sighed. "Talk about a let down. A fancy boarding school and I can't even find one guy."
"Oh?" Hikaru raised an eyebrow. "No 'men' to capture your heart?" She made air quotes, smiling sneakily.
Sophie turned scarlet. "Would you stop it with that?"
"I would, but it's just too much fun."
"What about you, then?" Sophie challenged. "Have you found any guys here?"
Hikaru's stomach churned, remembering her encounter less than ten minutes ago. That boy had been rude, yet for some reason she'd found herself drawn to him. There was something about him. What had she seen in his eyes for a split second? Who was he?
Before Hikaru had a chance to respond, Madoka appeared, placing a large pile of books on the table.
"What the- Madoka, you've had two classes. Pray tell why you have five books with you," Sophie moved her sandwich out of the way.
"I have an assignment on the legends on Starlight Academy," the other girl responded, slightly out of breath.
"And you need five books?!"
"I want to find out as much as I can," Madoka defended. "There's way more information here than what I could find on the internet back on the train."
Lunch continued in that way, with the four girls bickering back and forth. Hikaru rolled her eyes, smiling, but as lunch drew to a close she couldn't help but let her mind wander back to that strange boy she had met.
There was more to him than met the eye, and Hikaru intended to find out what.