A/N: This is from the Ties that Bind story, where I thought through if Hiromi had done a different prank at the talent show.
Birthday Bash 2020
Prompt 4: Musical
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This was it. The last talent show of the semester. The last chance Haru Yoshioka would have of impressing Nashima-san for months.
Principal Yami was just as nervous as some of the students waiting for their chance to perform, which was unusual for him. But then, Haru normally wasn't one to keep secrets from him. He gave another sidelong look from where he was directing the next act.
She didn't look at all like herself. He desperately wished that she had consulted him before cutting her hair short, or that she would have at least explained why she thought that scrubs and a satin rose had to be better attire for her plans if she wouldn't explain the plan itself. The pale girl was calmly sipping something out of a water bottle that he couldn't see the contents of, and watching the other acts with a strange detachment.
If only he knew what had been going on with her for the past few months. The other instruments were out of line, being at the center of two other incidents with other students, both involving one of the basketball players that was now suspended for not leaving her and her boyfriend alone.
Right. Haru had a boyfriend now. Yami didn't think that she and Tsuge were so much as aware of each other's existence, and then out of nowhere, dating and acting like they had grown up together. Yami had never really thought about a boy in Haru's life, but he was certain that it would fizzle before too long. Tsuge wasn't that likely to get into a college now that he had quit the basketball team.
At least she had gone back to the piano. If she had made plans for, say, the drums, he would have had no choice but to intervene.
After what felt like an endless parade of singers, he finally announced that Haru Yoshioka was going to be the final act of the show.
Only some of the parents applauded. That made him blink in surprise. Why weren't they more excited? Haru was possibly the best pianist to ever attend his school, and her career was sure to take off as soon as the right person heard her.
Haru seemed untroubled by the lack of enthusiasm. She downed the rest of her drink in one gulp, set the flowered bottle on the ground, and began strolling onto the stage with all the grace she possessed.
The two students he had already asked to push the piano onto the stage did so, putting it at a decent angle so that Haru would be easily seen by the audience.
Just as his protégé was sitting herself, a bowling ball dropped from over the stage and landed directly in the middle of the piano.
Haru screamed in surprise, but she was almost drowned out by the piano's strings breaking and the wood cracking like a car in a demolition derby.
Yami also jumped with surprise and immediately looked up to see who the culprit was.
Hiromi Hashima was glowing as she looked down on the wreckage from her precarious perch on the scaffolding.
"Hashima-san!" he roared at the top of his lungs. "You are in so much trouble!"
That made her flinch a bit before beginning her retreat.
Not that it mattered. Principal Yami had her parents' phone numbers, and he was going to make sure that disgusting brat would be transferred to another school for the following semester. With a suspension in place if he could talk the other principal into it.
He gave Haru a devastated look, since this was one more chance thrown away to get her into the best college and lend honor to his own school's name. "I'm sorry, Haru, but it looks like-"
"Time for a Plan B," she decided, looking angrier than he had ever seen her before. While he was surprised from her tone, she yanked the microphone out of his hands, turned to the farther edge of the stage, and began vocalizing a melody that he didn't recognize while keeping the cord from getting tangled between her feet.
He blinked at her in shock. He'd heard from his music teacher that Haru had been creating trouble by singing along with the choir, but she hadn't mentioned that the girl was…
Strangely hypnotic…
"Through the looking glass I go,
"Risking everything for what might be," she crooned into the microphone before locking eyes on a mirror from one of the previous acts.
"All the things I used to know,
"When my heart was young enough to see," she continued while making a nearly imperious gesture at the mirror.
"Through my own reflection,
"Past my imperfections,
"It's so intimidating,
"But no hesitating!" Haru seemed to be telling herself as two other students seemed helpless under her unspoken command.
Between them, they wheeled the tall, one-person mirror back onto the stage.
Haru approached it with a strange hunger in her eyes that Yami had never seen before, even as his mind seemed to think that her song was being backed up by an enthusiastic orchestra.
"Through the looking glass I go,
"Where the world is in reverse,
"And the ending always starts a new beginning!" Haru almost seemed to demand as she gripped one side of the mirror so that a majority of the audience could see her angry reflection instead of her direct face.
"Through the mirror, even though,
"Things may go from bad to worse,
"Close your eyes, let go, so we can pass…
"Through the looking glass!" she said clearly, but with more than just her own voice!
If the principal himself didn't know where all the microphones were anywhere close to the stage, he might have been able to convince himself that she wasn't really singing multiple voices at the same time. Some of the voices were even male!
A distant part of his mind told him he should shut this down, but yet he did not move.
Haru didn't want him to move.
"Here we come so clear the deck
"Bombs away and then look out below!" she bellowed up into the rafters Hiromi was now frozen in before redirecting her attention back to the mirror.
"I'm such a nervous wreck,
"Don't know up from down
"Or friend from foe!" she screamed at herself before something impossible happened!
Her eyes closed in agony, but when they opened again, they were no longer the familiar brown.
They were now completely green, and the pupils were slitted like a cat's!
"Fear will make me braver,
"Brave enough to save her!" only one voice cried out from her mouth, a deep man's voice almost desperately growing with hope.
Haru blinked again, and her eyes were back to normal, but now the surface of the mirror was beginning to ripple like liquid.
"All of you and me then," she continued with only her voice, and began adding two others for the following lyrics.
"Get set; one, two, three and-
"Through the looking glass we go
"Where the front is always back
"And what is left is right
"And sometimes wrong is righter!"
Haru shoved her hand directly into the ripping surface. Instead of making the whole mirror roll back a few paces, her hand bounced back like she had slammed it against impenetrable Jell-O.
Jell-O which had lost her reflection entirely to become filled with blue sparks that were swirling in the middle.
No. It couldn't be a portal!
"Through the mirror even though night is day
"And white is black
"As my boring life begins to approach
"Critical mass…"
The vortex was now clear. As if that long mirror was only the opening to another room, the audience and Principal Yami could clearly see a room with tall stone walls, with tables and bookshelves almost littered with thick books and strange-looking glass bottles half-full of fluids, but no one could pay attention to that.
Everyone was staring at the tall cat man with both of his hands pressed against his side of the mirror, like there was nothing he wanted more than to be on this side instead. There was no telling why he was wearing grey scrubs much like the ones Haru was wearing, though his looked more like a doctor's outfit than Haru's nurse look.
Perhaps what was the most disturbing of all was the fact that he had the exact same green eyes that had briefly been Haru's own.
Everyone saw him for only a second.
"Through the looking gla-AAGH!" Haru screamed in surprise as the cat man wasted no time reaching right through the mirror, grabbing Haru by the wrist still hovering over what should have been glass, and giving a powerful yank.
Haru dropped the microphone in surprise as she fell right through the mirror and against that cat man's chest as he began wrapping his arms around her.
The mirror shattered into a thousand pieces before anyone saw him complete the gesture.
It later took medics a solid three hours to remove all the shards from Principal Yami's body, and he never did get his eyesight back.
Though even he had to admit that if Haru had ever resurfaced after the incident, she'd have more than won first prize.
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A/N: The song was 'Through the Looking Glass' from Frank Wildhorn's Alice in Wonderland musical, though I did alter some of the lyrics so they would better suit Haru's situation. I did use this song in Ties that Bind, but I've never really stopped thinking about what if I had used it here instead.