(A/N): These first few chapters are going to drop atomic bombs in terms of epic information. And then, after that, we get to more action.

No, you don't get to see the McGuffin this thing is named after yet. Not yet... hehehe...

Thanks to DGM otaku for reviewing!

CHAPTER ONE: HOME

The night air that Thursday was chilly, and a dark orange-red color, from the leaves falling from the trees in the neighborhood. The few stars there were that night twinkled, slowly and silently, above the sad, dilapidated old townhouse. A girl was walking up to the house. Her name was Coraline, and she was just getting home from school. Her shoulder-length black hair was waving in the slight wind, and her coat was flapping open, even in the cold. Coraline walked along the cracked and weed-ridden sidewalk and up the rotting steps to the door, which had paint chips flaking off and a bullet hole that dug halfway into the door.

I still wonder what that's from, she wonders.

She quickly opened the door. It creaked softly. Then she heard her sister's yell.

"Can't you get out of there any sooner after detention, Cora?" her sister screamed her nickname. "Dinner's almost ready, for God's sake! I can't believe I get home an hour before you do these days, and I have to go to my next job in half an hour!"

Coraline hung up her coat on a hook by the door. Her sister – Melanie – had been like this since she got the detention. Now, Melanie (although she liked to be called 'Mel') not only had to do her schoolwork (she was only sixteen – three years older than Coraline), work two jobs illegally, and not be found out each day by the Dragon Order (whom her sister liked to refer to as 'They'), but she had to make sure she scolded Coraline hard enough that she wouldn't get another detention.

"Sis! You know I get home late these days! The detention sentence I got lasts a month and it's been three weeks! I'll be out of it quickly, and then you won't have to worry so much!" Coraline shouted back.

"Don't call me Sis! If they look into your records while they place the detention papers and they see that Mom died five years ago and that Dad's been dead for far longer, we get taken away, to somewhere we will never be heard from again! That's not even considering if they've found out how to jinx phrases! Call me Mom, for Christ's sake!"

"I have some history to work on, Mom," Coraline said, her voice heavy with sarcasm. "So I'm going up to my room now, Mom. It would be very kind of you to bring my dinner up there, Mom."

"That's more like it," Mel answered. "But stop it with that tone."

Coraline left the hall and walked up the main stair. It was leaning slightly and the steps were decaying in places. She went up its narrow, steep spiral to another short hall, where the wallpaper was peeling and the floors would shift a little under her weight, into her room, where she set her backpack down on the small, ancient desk. She didn't bother to take her history textbook out. She just began to open the small, 'secret' compartment in her desk. There had been a false bottom in it as long as she could remember.

She pulled the little piece of string she had tied through a small hole in the wood, and lifted the bottom out. It wasn't a very big drawer, and the piece of wood wasn't very thick or heavy, so it was simple enough to lift it out.

"I told you dinner was almost done, Cora."

Her sister's voice caught her off guard. She almost threw the bottom of the drawer down on the floor. She turned around and saw that she had a small bowl and a spoon for her. "Your supper," Mel said simply. "Chicken soup. Not much but chicken in water, though. We didn't have enough for anything else."

Coraline took the soup from her sister. "Si – I mean, Mom, go away. I'm doing homework."

"Doesn't look like it to me. Looks more like you're opening your 'secret compartment' again. Coraline, we need to keep a good record. Just… do what your assignment is."

"It's nothing. Just supposed to read about the 'recent events' the textbook talks about. We've been doing this unit for a while now, you know that. It's where I found the pamphlet."

"That pamphlet that nearly cost us our safety! We need to get rid of it!"

"Mom, just…" Coraline sighed, turning to the small window. "Just look at the stars."

"Why, Cora? What difference will it make?" Mel asked. "It's not like it will make me older, or help us get more money, or keep us safe."

"It lets us look into the past," Coraline continued. "It lets us see what came before. The closest stars are four years away for light. We can see them as they were four years in the past. They could be dead and we wouldn't know.

"Somewhere out there is a star that was burning brightly in the past… a good past. A better past. A place where peace and harmony would live on, forevermore. Until now. It saw that past, and it shows its light as it was in that past, so that we may see the past, and know, and hope. We need to make sure that that star's light and legacy fades when we can get back to that time, and keep it, so that that star's death wish lives on."

"You're too much of a dreamer for your own good, Cora," Mel told her. "It's going to get you killed one day."

Coraline sighed, and set her head down on her desk.

"I need to leave now… I'm almost late for my other job," Mel said quietly. "Don't go outside while I'm gone, okay? You know what They do with squibs."

Coraline and Melanie hugged each other, and Melanie left the house.

(A/N): Ha ha ha! You should see your face! You were like, "HOLY FUCKIN' SHIT!" and I was like, "Yeah, bitch, watchya expect? Coraline's a reincarny of Twilight from My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic?"

And now you're like, "WTF?" and I'm like, "Yeah, I know my mind is fucked up."

So, two reviews! Pretty please? You can get three in one night!

By the way, some of the stuff in here is Mysteriously Relevant. With Capital Letters For A Magical Reason You Will Eventually Learn.