Prologue

09/14/05

"Hey, you, little girl, move over, I'm trying to walk here!" A burly mannishly-ugly senior girl shoved past a few juniors, including an especially stubborn one who was rooted to her spot, knocking away her hand as she moved to push her out of the way. "Did you freakin' hear me? I said move, ya midget!" She made one last move to grab the girl by her tawny brown hair and get her out of the way once and for all. However, as she made the move towards the girl's hair, the junior spun on her heel and seized her wrist.

"Ya know, by now you'd think you'd just have enough courtesy to walk around me. There's plenty of room there too. Of course, with your size, you might need to make arrangements ahead of time for a special entrance." The junior curled her mouth into a smirk at her own cruel joke and threw the senior's wrist back at her. "Now look what you've done, you've made me lose my appetite. Looks like I'll spend lunch in the library." She shoved her hands in her pockets and tried to waltz past, as if nothing had happened, but one of the senior's friends snatched her up by the back of her collar just before she got away. The culprit dragged her back to the scene and locked her arms behind her, shoving her into the senior's face as if she was a guilty thief.

"Yer not gonna just let'er go, are ya Darc? She needs ta be punished, right?" Darc's little flunky shook the junior around a bit, making her head jostle around sickeningly. Darc then grinned, enjoying this winning little situation quite well, bending down to come face to face with the junior, who was in fact quite small for her age. She had the sick grin of a cowardly politician, lying and running away until she had enough minions to take on someone head-on.

"What's yer name, midget? I could use some spunk like you, course ya'd hafta be loyal, we might hafta beat that one into ya. So what do yer tiny little excuses for friends call you?"

"Bite me, bitch. Like I'd ever be your little flun-" Darc landed a painful right hook right to the junior's jaw and they both heard a snap, their captive keeping her head to the side as she fought not to cry in pain of her jaw getting broken. Ms. Big-and-Burly backed up to admire her work, giggling dementedly at another's pain. The few underclassmen passing by made whispers of pity for her new object of aggression, but feared getting involved for their own safety, so they filed past, pretending they were just harmless parts of the scenery of the hallway. The upperclassmen weren't any help either, not that they would be, either being on Darc's side or not giving a damn about some junior getting her lesson for mouthing off an upperclassman. Darc took this opportunity in stride and prepared to give the junior bitch a swift kick just before another of her ugly minions spoke up.

"Hey wait, Darc, I just remembered, I know her. She's in my…uh…Oh yeah, she was in my Literature class in 5th grade, her name's uh…Ana I think." The minion stood with her mouth half open even after she'd finished talking, giving her the look of a teacher who had forgotten where she'd left off after answering a question. However, she spoke no more, so Darc assumed she'd said all she needed to say. Either way, she turned back to the junior, who she now knew as Ana, and bent down to pull on Ana's left eyelid, tugging annoyingly on her eyelashes so she couldn't blink, blowing in her eye to piss her off more and more. She could see Ana breaking, snarling now and shaking her shoulders furiously to get loose, blinking her right eye insanely. Giving up any hope of getting her hands loose, and now getting very angry that she couldn't blink properly, Ana delivered a crushing horse's kick to her captor's kneecaps, giving herself enough of a space between the kick and the captor's screams of pain to get loose and on top of Darc.

Seizing her chance, Ana grabbed handfuls of Darc's dirt-brown hair and cracked punch after punch to her pudgy face, snarling furiously between each one. The flunkies were on her in a second, but she rolled out of the dog pile so Darc ended up the victim instead. Satisfied with getting away partially intact, she focused her attention back on her now heavily-throbbing broken jaw. With no more adrenaline to drive her through her fits of rage, the pain quickly grew to borderline excruciating as she tried to wobble out the front door to get home. Her tawny hair was tattered from the encounter and some of the locks at the front had even stuck to her left eye, since it's being dried out and re-moistened made it a magnet. She blinked a few times to whisk the hair away, but so much stimulus to her retina had caused her nose to run and she sneezed, throwing her jaw pain to new levels. She tried her best to keep it to a hiss, since yelling or so much as saying "ow" would make it worlds worse.

She'd made it to the front courtyard walk of the school when she realized she'd left her bag and books in her class when she'd gone to lunch, and knowing she already had homework, leaving them and going home wasn't an option anymore. Now giving up rubbing the many areas of her that ached her, she simply resolved her arms to her sides in defeat, slouching down the hallway, past all of the teacher's asking her why she wasn't at lunch, past the librarian trying to give another 2-minute quickie lecture on returning her books on time, which were now 3 weeks late, past the principal demanding to know what happened in the hallway earlier. None of them mattered, all that mattered was getting her bag and getting her tired self home to bed and getting her jaw wired back together.

Without looking up, she navigated the hallways, back to the 1400's, and shuffling into her Physics class, back to her desk, lumbering her bag onto her shoulder, and shuffling back out without a word to her teacher, who'd stopped mid-bite of his sandwich to ask why her jaw was hanging so strangely. Taking the back hallway to the back door, a quicker and sneakier way she often used to skip class, she ended up back on the front walk just as the bell for lunch to end rang shrilly, making her wince in surprise.

Making use of the stone bench between two hyacinth bushes, she took a seat and pondered her next move, remembering that she hadn't given it a thought, she'd only been concerned with getting out of there before Darc and her buddies could fight their way loose. Trying to forget the embarrassing events of the day, she stretched out to lie down over the cool stone, the September chill cooling the bench comfortably. At least once every week, she'd come out here, whether it was on break or just to get away from class. The hyacinths smelled lovely, though the smell wasn't over-powering enough to rule her senses. She rolled over, tracing her fingers in the intricate details of the feet, loose little curls that her fingers could run through all the way to the center, where little limestone fairies sat, peaceably gazing off into the distance, as if nothing but what color the sky was mattered.

Ana had helped design this same bench in her 6th grade art class, at the elementary school down the street. Their final project had been to design and create a notable piece of art, whether it be a charcoal drawing or a painting, the teacher gave them almost complete free range. However, Ana hadn't the resources to create the bench she wanted, so asking the teacher, he decided such a grand idea could be a true piece of displayable art. It had taken her 3 months to create the bench, with the help of her caretaker and teacher as well of course, but the design had been all hers. At the time, she couldn't be more proud of her success, but now, it just seemed like a blur in the continuity of her life. Thankfully, this was one of the very few surfaces that hadn't been the victim of the school's typical cruel graffiti. Perhaps even the talent-less hacks of this junkyard could have some appreciation for such art.

Lost in thought, it took her a few moments to realize a car, particularly a shiny silver Eclipse, had pulled up in the drive in front of her, honking insistently. Not entirely interested in what this persistent person had to do with her, she creaked into a sitting position with her legs dangling off; watching bored as the driver turned around and rolled down the passenger window from the console on the driver's left. As the tinted window disappeared, midnight hair, lipstick and mascara appeared on a beautifully pale face. This was what made Ana finally sit up to look. The driver finally turned her fluffy head, causing the long braid at the back to hit the side door, looking through the window into Ana's honey-hazel eyes. Ana could only stare back in a familiar silence.

"Declora?"

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That's all for now! D Sorry, I just had to introduce Ana real fast, and I know that was a pretty lengthy introduction but a short chapter! TT I had to stop though, otherwise I'd keep going too long and end up with too much for it to stay a prologue! Oh well, Chapter 2'll be juicy and introduce Declora and the crossover. And yes, Ana will be our protagonist…and perhaps our antagonist too. 3 Juuuuuicyyyyy. By the way, that's Ana saying Declora, the lady in the car isn't calling Ana that. Phew, big explanation here. One more thing! Ana is a shortened version of her real name, which you'll find out later. So yes, you may sigh in relief now that we don't have a protagonist with a boring name. P I hate it when that happens. Ok everyone, review and stick around for Chapter 1, cause it's gonna rock, I promise. P …I hope. TT