School...takes so much time out of fanfiction writing o_O Just so you know, I've been getting really confused about their ages in this story...I've decided that most of the main characters are 17, Françoise and other older sister like characters like Chiara and Maria etc are 18, and younger characters like Meg and Nikolai are 16 XD I find this makes the story less confusing...for me, at least XD I think I wasn't a little bit lazy at the end of this chapter o_O
"How...How is that girl still alive?" Rosa asked no one in particular, leaning against the wall for support. She honestly didn't care that they were at Amelia's house as long as she was out of that metal deathtrap. Although Alice didn't seem to understand why everyone wanted to get off there she didn't say anything, since it meant that she could go straight home.
Amelia raised an eyebrow at the slumped British girl. "What are you talking about? You're all acting so weird..." She turned to Françoise, who was attempting to drag Sakura in through the front door. The Japanese girl had fainted after Alice said she was going to try and overtake a Ferrari. "Will she be alright?"
"I think so..." Françoise sighed, closing the door as she finally brought Sakura inside. "I think it'd be best if we took her somewhere where she could lie down"
"...Hello, Amelia" The door to what Rosa knew was the living room swung open suddenly, revealing a very familiar girl, her arms crossed and her violet eyes narrowed dangerously. "You have some explaining to do" Meg said coolly.
"Huh? Oh, hey Meg" Amelia said. "Sorry, but is it okay if we save this for later? One of my friend's kind of unconscious and another one of them has a little bit of explaining to do, so..." She trailed off, noticing someone who was now at her sister's side. "Wait, Anya?" Amelia asked in disbelief, immediately stiffening at the sight of the Russian girl. "Why are you here?"
"Dobryj dyen, Amelia" Anya smiled, ignoring the frosty look Amelia gave her.
Rosa couldn't help but shiver slightly at Anya's unwavering beam. Anya had transferred to their school from another in Russia about a year ago. Rumours immediately spread about her and her two brothers, mainly things like her family's part of some kind of Russian mafia, Nikolai, her younger brother, will try to kill anyone who looks at him or his sister the wrong way, Anya was singlehandedly attempting to take over the world... (That was the only rumour that Rosa was pretty sure wasn't true...) Anyway, pretty much everyone was scared of her. Amelia was pretty much convinced she was evil, and she and sometimes Alice would often try to fight with her over the simplest things. The only ones at school who seemed to actually get along with Anya, or at the very least didn't accuse her of being insane, were Chun-yan and Meg.
"Anya came round to give you the homework you got today" Meg explained. "Since you disappeared in the middle of school today..."
"Hey, that wasn't my fault!" Amelia defended. "Rosie got taken out of school by these two countries, except I didn't know they were countries and I thought they were part of some evil kidnapping organisation 'cause they kidnapped Rosie yesterday! So I was understandably worried, and-"
Meg frowned "...'Countries'? What the heck is that supposed to mean...?"
"I'm sorry, I can't explain" Amelia said dramatically, which only made the Canadian girl glare at her "It's classified"
Rosa turned away from the two sisters, sighing. "This is going to take a while" she said to Françoise who was trying to support the still unconscious Japanese girl. "Let's just go ahead take Sakura to Amelia's room. She can rest there"
Françoise nodded, actually agreeing with Rosa for once. "But won't it be hard to carry her upstairs...?"
"It's fine. Amelia's dad moved her room downstairs when she was little. It was probably because he was scared she'd jump out a window or something...Come on, I'll show you" She grabbed Sakura's ankles, lifting them up so that both she and Françoise were holding Sakura above the ground.
They moved down the hall, past the three girls who were so occupied with their argument that they didn't notice them. Rosa opened one of the doors behind them, a white door with the words 'secret hideout' scribbled on in permanent marker, along with a few doodles of stars and spaceships, allowing them to step inside.
Amelia's room made Rosa think of some kind of war between clothes and toys, the bed being one side and the wardrobe the other. The floor, with the amount of things that were littered around, was obviously no man's land. (Probably not the best way to describe things, but with the amount of dreams Rosa had about wars in the past she sometimes couldn't help it)
After somehow climbing over the destruction that could have once been called a bedroom floor, Rosa and Françoise lay Sakura down on the bed, easing the spaceship patterned pillow under her head. Sakura groaned slightly, but didn't wake up.
"Wow" was all Françoise could say as she looked around the room properly. The only things that Amelia actually seemed to take care of were two fluffy stuffed toys, an alien and a whale, which were set carefully on top of the wardrobe. Amelia brought them down at night to sleep with, and would then put them back up every morning. Sometimes, if she had been watching a horror film that night, she would sleep with her baseball bat too. This bat was usually carefully hidden inside the wardrobe along with two boxes. One was labelled 'School things' (which Rosa knew was a complete lie. Really it was filled with a secret stash of sweets and horror movies) and 'Sakura's stuff'. This box was used for all the anime and video games that Sakura bought but was too scared to keep around her home in case her parents found them.
Rosa sat on the mattress, a little bit away from Sakura, making sure to keep her feet above the ground. You never knew what was under Amelia's bed.
An awkward silence set between the two rivals.
"This whole thing…..is pretty hard to believe" Françoise finally said. "I admit, I do have strange dreams….about wars and things that almost feel like they happened in the past….But….the whole 'country' and 'sister' thing…."
"It's not like you have to worry about any of this" Rosa said bitterly. "You said you don't want to be involved, right?"
"It's not like that" Françoise sighed. Rosa realised that the French girl didn't seem as willing to start an argument with her like normal. "It's just...It's sad, isn't it?"
"...'Sad'?"
"Think about it. If all of this is really true, then...then is anything about us real?" Françoise began playing with a strand of her brown hair, not looking Rosa in the eye "Surely you must of realised this, non? If we really are connected to these people, these countries, then doesn't that mean that we're just clones? A copy of someone else? It would mean that everything, everything about us, had been decided for us, before we were even born. I've known you since I was seven, Rose, when we both still lived in our home countries. Our parents were friends, and would visit each other on holidays...But us? We hated each other immediately. I would speak in French to annoy you because you had no idea what I was saying, and you would try to hit me with a pirate sword you made out of cardboard. Don't you think it's wrong that the way we felt about each other was decided before we even met?"
"It..." Rosa defended weakly "It's not like we always fight. There are a few times where I don't completely hate you..." Rosa had actually thought of what Françoise was saying, and had stayed awake practically the entire night before just worrying about it.
Françoise smiled sadly "Désolé, I know you think I'm just being spiteful, and maybe I am being selfish in a way, but I'd like to keep the idea that I really am my own person. Even if I'm just pretending, if I'm just being naive. If you do end up needing me, I will try to help, but otherwise..."
"Fran..."
The door slammed open, making both Rosa and Françoise jump in surprise. "Yes! I get it! Skipping school is wrong, alright? Sorry for having more important things to do then learning why an apple fell of a tree!" Amelia yelled into the hall. She was clutching a few pieces of paper tightly, which Rosa decided was probably the homework Anya had delivered. She huffed, closing the door, before holding the sheets of paper up to the light. "...Okay" Amelia said after a while. "I don't think these are explosive"
Rosa rolled her eyes "Amelia, I don't think even Anya could make paper explosive..."
"Hey, it exists! ...Probably" Amelia shrugged. "But that girl must have had some other motive other than dropping off this 'homework'...I mean, she's obviously evil. She has purple eyes! Who the heck has purple eyes?"
"...Your sister?"
"Me?" Françoise pointed to herself, eyebrow raised.
"….Forget it. We have work to do!" Amelia grabbed a pen from the floor, jumping onto the bed next to Rosa. Using the back of her homework, she quickly scribbled the title 'names'. Rosa decided not to say anything about the now ruined homework. Amelia would just get away with it anyway. "We need to figure out who else could be like us!"
"Um...Ma chère?" Françoise said hesitantly. "Sakura is involved in this as well; wouldn't it be better if we waited for her to wake up first?"
"Oh, right, right" Amelia glanced at Sakura. "…..Anime con's starting early this year" she said quietly.
Sakura's eyes immediately snapped open "I….What? Where…?" Her eyes widened as she seemed to remember the events of the past few hours. "So….So many cars….." she mumbled faintly.
"Sakura's awake" Amelia said cheerily. "Okay, so we already have all of us and Alice too" She wrote down these names on the paper. "Do we know anyone else that could be like us?"
"….Amelia what makes you think we would know anyone else like us?" Rosa sighed "What are the odds that everyone would just happen to be in the same place?" She didn't mean to sound so pessimistic, but after everything that had happened Rosa just wanted to go home. Her headache from earlier hadn't gone away, in fact it just seemed to be getting worse.
"We're all here!" Amelia grinned "And America's supposed to be the melting point of the world right? Lots of different people from lots of different countries come here, so why the hell not?"
"There are lots of people from different countries at school" Sakura pointed out. She seemed to of finally recovered. "We can write those down, and try to visit them one by one to see if we can figure it out. We can cross them off after that"
"Right, right" Amelia said. "So…..Monika and Maria are both from Germany right?" She wrote these down before looking up expectantly"
"Chun-Yan-san is from China, right?" Sakura added.
Françoise smiled "I believe Isabel is from Spain"
Amelia hurriedly scribbled these names down. "Let's see…..There's also…." Her expression darkened suddenly. "I suppose we'll have to include Anya, right?" She didn't wait for a reply, and reluctantly wrote this too, adding a small unhappy face underneath it.
"….Didn't Meg live in Canada until a while ago?" Rosa said thoughtfully.
"…Meg?" Amelia frowned, thinking it over. "I….I guess it's possible…." She held up the paper, examining her writing. "I guess this is everyone we know from a different country, huh?"
"Everyone we pretty much get along with at least" Françoise said. "It does seem, smaller then I would of thought though"
"Yeah…..Well, now that that's put of the way" Amelia turned to Rosa "I'm still upset with you, Rosie!"
Rosa blinked. "Wha-? But….We've already been over this Amelia!"
"It doesn't change the face that you hid something super important from us!" Amelia huffed. "Admit it, you just don't trust me"
"Oh, for- I only found out yesterday. I've barely had time to think about it myself! And now...And now you're all involved too….I just- Ah-!" Rosa gasped, clutching her head.
"…..'Ah'?
"Ow….My….My head…." Rosa gritted her teeth, trying to stop the tears that were starting to cloud her vision. Her headache which was just a simple annoyance to her before suddenly felt like her head was splitting in two.
"Rosie?" Amelia asked worriedly. "Are….Are you alright? Rosie?"
"I….I don't-" Rosa gasped again. She was vaguely aware of the other moving closer to her, watching her anxiously. "St-stop it!" She found herself crying. "I-….Y-you can't-!"
Out of nowhere, Rosa fell silent, now staring at the ground. Her eyes were unfocused, as if she was looking at something the others couldn't see.
"….Rosie?" Amelia asked. "Are you-?
Rosa jerked suddenly, quickly turning to Amelia. Her eyes were still unfocused. "You don't know what you're doing!" She yelled. "You can't do this! Don't you remember me? Don't you know who you are? Why…..? What…..What did they do to you?"
Amelia grabbed the British girl's shoulders "R-Rosie, what are you talking about? Just….just calm down, and…."
Rosa blinked at her sleepily. "Huh….? Amelia…..?"
"Are….you okay, Rose?" Françoise asked nervously.
"Yes? Why wouldn't I be?"
"Um…..Don't you remember what you were just saying?" Sakura asked confusedly.
Rosa shook her head. Oddly, she found she couldn't remember the past few minutes. Amelia said that she was still upset with her, and then…..
Nothing. All she knew was that she suddenly felt really sleepy and that her headache was gone.
Dramatic~ Amelia kind of ruined the serious moment with Rosa and Françoise XD And something weird happened with Rosa….:O Well, I guess everyone will find out one day :D Please review and tell me what you think ^_^