Phoenix Rising
Chapter 1: Sleepover
(Writer: Teki-chan)
Disclaimer: We do not own Sailor Moon or Gundam Wing, and owned by Naoko Takeuchi and Bandai, respectively. This fanfiction was created for the amusment of the writers, and we do not make any profit off of it, no matter how poor and desperate we are.
And a side comment by Teki-chan: Good lord, this is oooold. I'd rewrite it if I weren't so busy/lazy.
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A red head lay sprawled across the floor, carefully drawing in a rather large sketchpad. Every once and awhile she had to flip her mid back length hair over her shoulder so that she could see her latest drawing take shape. She was dressed however to go to sleep any time despite the intense concentration on what she was working on.Black pajamas reached down to her wrists, where white laced cuffs had been bent backwards against its grain, most likely to keep it out of the artist's way. Down the front were white ribbons sewed down to create a ruffled appearance, and lace then appeared out from underneath these ribbons. The lace continued on around the hem of the shirt, and echoed around the hem of the wrists and of the ankles of the pants. Most of the time, when such a style was tried, the thing had always ended up stiff and itchy, but this time, they had gotten it right. The pajamas felt incredibly light, but were under no threat of letting the wearer freeze to death, of feel as if she had nothing on. They covered not only anything that shouldn't be seen unless you were with someone that you were quite intimate with, but nearly everything else that wasn't hands, feet, or head. This olden style of pajamas had more then once gotten a few well chosen words out of a certain friend of hers. Of course, her friend had always gotten a few well chosen words from her as well.
With a timing that was unmistakably Josefina's, the girl swept back into the room in a style vaguely reminiscent of Spanish royalty. The affect was rather destroyed though by the plate of sandwiches she was carrying, and the current clothing she was wearing. She too looked ready to go to sleep, though her choice of sleeping clothing was not any where near as formal, proper, but was much more 'preppy'. She wore a nightgown that was truly a red over sized shirt made to be so long as to drape all the way to a bit below the knees. The sleeves were completely black, and were the ever annoying three-quarter length, and looked connected together by the black hem around the neckline. Written across the front of the nightgown in a script which belonged to the Old English family were the words, 'The princess is sleeping'. The phrase was rather suiting, not for any actual blood running in the girl's veins, but more for the attitude that it made anyone think of when they read it.
"What are you doing Kia?" The question was shot off and quickly followed by Josefina laying claim to the first sandwich there.
The red head looked up at the Hispanic 'princess' with a look that said something along the lines of 'what the heck do you think'. Kia was not exactly one to feel alright with repeating the obvious, or at least, what she felt was obvious, "I'm drawing."
A swallow and then, "What are you drawing?"
"A rabbit."
Josefina leveled a look at her friend, not at all believing that someone with so much artistic talent would waste her time drawing a rabbit of all things. Then again, she had never really understood why artists were always trying to make much of anything, trying to copy something point for point. So there this random person had seen the stars over some weird town, that didn't mean that they had to go and paint a warped version of reality to show it. That was another thing, while she didn't get why artists spent so much time drawing any one thing, she couldn't understand why an artist would draw it badly. Not even badly because they couldn't draw properly, but intentionally, as if making the picture of something no one was going to see abstract was going to do any good. If doing some form of good was actually what they had been trying to do. And if they weren't trying to do good, well, Josefina didn't want to know what it was about then. She was quite aware that she didn't understand artists, and quite frankly, she was okay with that.
"Why are you drawing a rabbit?"
Kia had to look back up from her sketch pad again to meet Josefina's doubting gaze before replying, "I want to be able to draw all sorts of things. I don't want to only be able to draw a few things well. I want to draw everything."
Josefina sighed before starting to continue eating her sandwich, it was easier then trying to figure out her red headed friend. A rabbit? A rabbit. Is she honestly spending her time drawing a rabbit? One of those annoying rodents that the gardener complains about eating our plants? If she spent half as much time on getting a boyfriend as she did filling up bound packs of paper with pretty little pictures, she could have top choice from the cream of the crop! Right after me of course.
That was yet another thing that separated the two girls when it come to their two thought processes. Josefina seemed endlessly caught in a cycle of getting a new boyfriend, trying them out for a week or two, dumping them, and then finding a new one. Kia had taken it up to call the poor fellows the 'flavor of the week' until Josefina gave her such a look that it left Kia off-balanced, and ready to regress back into a complete recluse again. But where Josefina was going through them like there was going to be no tomorrow, Kia remained extremely aloof and almost disdainful of the opposite gender. Never before had she taken on the idea of committing herself to a guy with any sort of seriousness, and showed no inclination of doing it anytime soon. When one would ask about the other's problems with the other gender, they would retreat behind a wall of self-knowledge, and tell the other that 'they had their reasons'. Some of which were more obvious then others.
"Why are you drawing a rabbit again?"
Kia gave an undignified snort, and gave Josefina one of her patented looks. For her, this counted as restating the obvious, "I told you, because I want to be good at drawing everything."
"You're already good at drawing everything! You're going to be the next Picasso or something."
Kia didn't reply immediately at that. How exactly could you? In one breath her friend had just given her semi-daily boost of confidence that Kia had the bad habit of needing and insulted her to no know degree. It was a disorienting, and confusing, the sort of thing that deserved, and received confused looks that clearly questioned what the person had said and had meant to say.
"Josefina, you do realize Picasso is, right?"
Josefina scowled, annoyed at have to answer the question that so readily brought to dispute her intelligence. It was one of the down parts of taking the out cast artist Kia in under her wing, she also ended up with a person that was ready to point out your mistakes. "Yes, he's the guy who painted really funky."
At Kia's prolonged staring, that asked without words why she had been compared to him in the first place without words, "It was the first name that I could think of alright? I mean, so sue me already!"
"Jo! You should pay more attention in classes then, because we just went over a whole slue of them in art."
Josefina's response bordered on the line of whining, "Aw, but Kia, you know I don't pay attention to the teacher in that class. However, that boy that got transferred in last week is so hot!"
Kia couldn't help but finally break eye contact to turn her face to the side and scowl. Josefina's emphatic giggles weren't helping at all either. Josefina and her boys. Josefina had never failed to amaze Kia with her infallible energy towards getting a guy, despite the fact that if Kia thought about it long enough she could swear that Josefina had dated them all.
"You know, he's probably more of your type. The arty type I mean. Probably has the same life goal as you," Josefina made a poorly hidden grimace, "to draw everything as good as it gets. And he's cute…"
Kia attempted to both to stifle the coming groan, and to Josefina a heavily exasperated look. Right next to Josefina's drive to get herself a new boyfriend, at least once a month, was the drive to get all of her friends hooked up with some random guy. Kia had always felt in some way that Josefina subconsciously, or consciously knew that she wasn't going to stay with a guy, so wanted to get someone close to her romantically involved just to see it happen. For the next best thing to being in a relationship like that is to be close enough to one that you are let in on all of the 'aww' moments. That is, if you could take the fact that you weren't in that relationship and thinks looked bleak for it ever happening to you. Somewhere deep within her being, Kia probably wished that she could be in one of those loving relationships that you find in trashy romance novels, but with a lot less of the lust. A relationship with chivalry. However, she had always managed to dismiss it to her hormones being over active again, and not something even worth her time of properly attending to. Besides, she had seen a relationship gone bad enough to leave her forever scarred, and seen the worst that the males of her species had to offer. It was enough to make her dare not even risk it.
"You really were working on a rabbit!"
Kia jerked to here and now, and was stunned and unhappy to see that her sketch book had been commandeered while she had been off on a thinking tangent. Josefina had obviously gotten bored waiting for Kia to come up with something to say to her, so had decided to find a way to amuse herself. Even now, with Kia sitting gaping at her, the Hispanic girl continued to flip through the pages in the sketch book, occasionally muttering this or that comment.
"Hey! These guys are cute! Who are they? Secret crushes?"
Kia felt the blood rush to her face, and could almost feel the blush spreading from the edge of one cheek, over her nose and onto the other cheek. While she could deal with Josefina's match making attempts with a semblance to dignity, she couldn't handle being accused of liking a guy. It was either blush furiously, or shout out denials about how she couldn't like the so-and-so for such-and-such reasons. And she felt practically guilty of liking these supposedly existent guys because she had spent so many nights leaning over them as she slowly brought them to life through her pencils. She had even gone so far as to actually use her precious professional colored pencils to color further life into them.
"No, they are not secret crushes! They're figments of my imagination!"
"Incredibly cute figments of your imagination." Josefina decided against asking just what had inspired Kia of all people to hold the image of five guys in her head long enough to fully render them on paper. This way Kia might end up letting her stare at the picture longer. If only such cute guys existed! Too enthralled was she, when Kia too took the time to stare at her own picture as well, with a much more suppressed longing.
On the farthest left was the tallest of the boys, and easily fitted the 'tall, dark and handsome' stereotyping. Fully wrapped around him was the feeling of mysterious silence, and the need to pay attention to any one thing that he said. While he didn't look ready to smile, you could tell that if he spared that precious gift for you, you were to consider yourself extremely lucky. He wore a simple combo of white pants and a green turtle neck. The sort of thing that Kia had always imagined for getting close and personal just for those quiet moments where you just take in the others presence. The only thing that she could consider near imperfect for him was his hair, it was short, but almost all of it looked like it had been combed into this gigantic uni-bang. While Kia liked unique hairstyles, she didn't think it fair that the boy would hide so much of his face, even to the point that one of the eyes were hidden behind the light brown screen.
Second to the left was a boy who looked radically different from the first, as if he could take the laughter and life, and bottle it. At least, he looked like had his fair share of the drink of laughter, and had no plans to stop drinking. The wide grin plastered across his face made that clear enough. Chestnut brown hair was pulled back into a long braid that waved around, as if frozen in the act of echoing the exuberant actions of its owner. However, the clothing suggested that the boy should have been moving with a bit more reserve, with more of an air of serenity, not off the wall energy. They were almost a completely dower black, except for where a white under shirt peaked out at the neck line, and both sets of sleeves had been rolled back to behind his elbow. On the front of his black shirt were two yellow lions facing each other, and rearing up but firmly caged with the yellow outlines of shields, and separated by being on different sides of the shirt. It almost looked like something that she would expect a priest would wear while allowed to go about his own business. Almost…
On the far right was a boy that had some very obvious Chinese heritage, and Kia probably would have been rather predisposed to him because of it. If he hadn't had that oh-so-superior smirk gracing his well-sculpted face. The smirk was echoed and turned into a mark of tightly bound dignity by the ebony black ponytail that looked so painfully tight that it seemed to want to pull apart his scalp. His heritage shown clear again through his clothing that looked like an over size white pajama top, with large baggy sleeves and all over loose white pants. Kia couldn't imagine how the Chinese boy managed to pull of those sorts of clothing, and make them looked so fine! She would have guessed that might have been the source of the smug self-assurance, if the smirk didn't carry such a 'holier then thou' look. Lady killers never were like that, they always had a wide grin, a witty joke or comment ready to impress the ladies, and didn't dare try to look superior incase that lost the ladies. The braid boy was a much better example of someone who looked like he was out to look for some girl to woo.
In the middle was the most intense eyed person that she had ever seen, drawing or no. He glared out at the on looker from around his messy bangs, with Prussian blue eyes, with an almost hostile confidence in himself. The effect was only helped along by the fact that he was wearing a plain blue jeans, a nearly skin tight white t-shirt, and a black leather jacket. If any of the boys there looked ready to prove all that Kia feared about the opposite gender, then he would be the one. From the stare, to the clothing, he screamed the stereotype 'tough guy', except that most tough guys didn't that sort of intense stares even if they were trained from the day they were born. They'd go a million years before even getting close to that sort of thing, at least in Kia's opinion. Why else would most of them to choose sunglasses to wear then? No, this boy had a talent for that sort of thing, pure and simple, and he knew it, and wasn't afraid to use it. Somehow though, Kia knew that he'd be more the type to grab you by the shoulder, throw you against the wall, and leave you cowering as he went on with whatever he planned to do. Unless you deserved a threat, and/or were in the way of solving his objectives. She couldn't tell what would happen to the poor soul standing in his way, but it was quite sure that she wouldn't want to be in their boots at all.
Finally, the one second to the right, the one that some how, Kia always ended up studying the last, no matter who else she started on. She also always seemed to end up studying him for the longest, no matter how much time she had put into looking at the picture over all. Perhaps it was because the way that he gently smiled seemed a complete obvious from those males she knew personally, the way he seemed like he wouldn't have hurt a fly if he had the choice. He seemed to represent just about everything that she hoped was out there, and did seem to have any of the traits she abhorred. No 'I am superior then you, just give me the chance to show you how low you are', no rough and unnerving silence, no 'don't you dare get in my way or else you won't like it', nothing like that. He looked so… soft. Caring. Polite. Gentle. Kia was absolutely sure that if he had been a real person, she would have become overly attached far too quickly, and just asking to get hurt. Thank the heavens that he really was just a colored on piece of paper. Besides, he must have had some sort of flaw, no one could be so perfect, but Kia couldn't find it just by looking at a picture she drew of him.
"Are you sure that these aren't a bunch of crushes that you haven't told me about?"
Kia turned, and her eyes met Josefina's dancing own, and realized the Hispanic girl had been watching her for the time that she had been spaced out and in dream land. Twice in the same night. Kia was not at all feeling very up to her own standards.
"No, they aren't any I know, or I have even seen in passing! They're simply figments of my imagination! They popped into my head, and begged to be set down into the paper."
"Uh-huh." Josefina demonstrated articulately just how much trust she put into that, before continuing to leaf through the sketchbook.
"I mean it Jo!" Before Josefina could repeat her last response, Kia lunged for her sketchbook, and managed to wrap her fingers around a couple of pages.
"Hey! I was looking at that!" Josefina fell backwards, trying to hold the sketchbook out as far as she could, to force Kia to let go.
However, as fate would have it, neither of the two girls would really win, but the sketch book most certainly would be on the loosing side. As the two girls tussled for possession over the sketch book, with shouts of 'its mine', 'let me see it', and many repeats of the other's name, the binding of the sketch book refused to take any more. With a ripping sound, Kia ended up flopping over Josefina, while Josefina herself, fell backwards, both having been thrown off by the sudden lack of balancing pulls. After a few moments of stunned silence, Kia peered at what laid death gripped in her hands, and slowly took in what they meant. She had managed to secure roughly five or six of the pages from the middle area of her sketchbook, leaving the rest in Josefina's hands.
Josephina was quick to the recovery, and had shoved Kia off of herself, and then sat cross-legged on her own bed, flipping through the sketchbook again. Obviously, if Kia had gone through such an effort to make sure that she wasn't going to look through the sketchbook, then there must be something very valuable to hide. Something that Kia knew would set Josefina into a fit of either giggles or teases, but either way, highly enjoyable to the raven haired princess. It didn't occur to her that the demand had been made in retaliation to the sheer embarrassment that Kia didn't feel like dealing with. All she had to do was get through all of the pictures of fuzzy animals, plants, landscapes, oddly dressed woman to get to the good looking guys.
Wait a sec, oddly dressed woman? Josefina skipped back a couple of pages, flipped around the sketchbook so it faced Kia and asked, "Kia, who is this chick in front of the whirly gig?"
The woman was oddly dressed, and it seemed to suit her perfectly well, considering her environment, accessories, and attitude about the whole thing. The clothing seemed like some strange warped version of a girl's school uniform from Japan, with shorter skirts, and a few more extra frills and bows added. Except, she looked a bit old to be wearing a schoolgirl's uniform, not that she didn't look absolutely great the way she was. She just created a very mysterious, silent, and knowledgeable air about her, that no high school student that Kia had known ever had. Heck, they didn't even half the knowledge that it would take for them to back up any sort of air that they knew anything at all. It was perfect for the setting that she had been placed into. Behind her and to the left was a swirling vortex, twisting space around it, so that it would take in anything through a chaos filled path to the center. It seemed like an uncontainable event, but it was surrounded and held in place by a large and intricate marble ring mounted upward from the mist-covered floors. In the woman's hand was a staff that while it looked a horribly effective weapon, looked oddly like a key as well. Her long green hair twisted and twirled majestically in an unseen breeze.
"She's another figment of my imagination, Josefina." Kia held out her hand for the sketch book, and the toned she used, coupled with the use of Josefina's full name left no room for a good way to tell Kia that she wasn't getting her sketch book back.
"Fine fine, here here. Whatever." Josefina tossed Kia her sketchbook back, and watched Kia placed the ripped out pages back into the book randomly. She caught sight of a page covered in another 'whirly gig' was slid in where she could recall the boy's picture was. However, she made no comment of it. It must simply have been the result of a day that Kia was simply too bored to draw anything else.
"I'm going to sleep now."
"That sounds like a good idea Josefina." And after tucking her sketchbook under her pillow, she did just that, drifting to the land of dreams following closely her friend.
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Author's Note: Sorry for the lack of any Sailor Moon or Gundam Wing characters in the preliminary chapter. Don't worry. They'll certainly be in the rest of the story.
