Once in the Moonlight XIX: You're still Reading. Wow.

CHAPTER LXIX1

She wore a satisfied smirk—one that she believed, was one she ha dwell earned. There was something in the air that declared victory: a certain blow that brought her to believe that the clue she long awaited was to come to her very soon. In her searching through dusted scrolls and ancient letters, the Queen concluded that the secrets of Earth wer just below the surface—and with just a little bit of digging…2

London Bridge is falling down, 3

Falling down, Falling down. 4

London Bridge is falling down, 5

My fair lady. ! 6

Britteni spun her head to find Isabelle humming innocently beside her. Noticing Britteni’s shock, she turned rose red, her fingers hovering in front of her lips. “I know its juvenile to hum…but whenever I get stressed, it just comes out! I suppose it started when I was little…and it gives me the confidence I had as a child. I’m sorry!” 7

To her surprise, Britteni did not laugh, nor shrug, nor do anything at all. She only stared, which only heightened Isabelle’s fear of humiliation. The melody was so foreign…and yet so common among these of earth! Could this be a forbidden song I have searched for?8

“Sing it again,” Britteni said hardly above a whisper. Of course, Isabelle could not possibly understand what she was doing, nor what she was being asked to do, but hummed once more the song she considered a normal melody. 9

Take a key and lock her up, 10

Lock her up, Lock her up. 11

Take a key and lock her up, 12

My fair lady. 13

There was something in the melody that held an unawakened power: a power Britteni sensed right away, a power she wanted to take hold of. 14

Stone so strong will last so long, 15

Last so long, Last so long. 16

Stone so strong will last so long, 17

My fair lady. 18

Stone! Suddenly, an idea hit her. Rushing off to her next class, she cared not to even say farewell, leaving Isabelle in the hallway, humming London Bridge alone and befuddled. 19

~20

“See, Emile?” she laughed as a flirty teen girl would, though truly, she was far more than that. “The forbidden songs aren’t as hidden as many would like us to think. I’m sure you could have found them just as easily as I did, but you had such little faith!” It was as if she was scolding a child. 21

Unlinking her arm from his, he frowned. “Your tampering with powers not meant to be trifled with,”22

Wearing a pout befitting her physical age, she replied, “They’re just little nursery rhymes. Little Earthen nursery rhymes,”23

“Earthen rhymes. Meant for Earth, not Musicana,” his expression grew graver. “I’ve tried to warn you a thousand times—this isn’t meant to be done. There will be great reprocussions for all of this—“24

“But you’re not the Queen, are you?” her eyes flickered raging gold for a moment, then calmed. “It’s good for you, really. It means less work, less thinking, less effort. All you have to do is what I tell you, dear…”25

“What now?” he rolled his eyes in jest. 26

“Nothing!” she beamed, excited at how close she was to victory, “I have discovered all that needs to be discovered, and from now to the end, I must prepare my people! All I ask you to do…” her voice lowered, looking him straight in the eyes, drawing closer to his face, “Is to not interfere.”27

~28

Ezhkarhna, Atlantis! I, Queen Aryelin, have the most exciting news to reach Atlantis in centuries: we are to return to our rightful land! There is very little you must do, but do it well! Gather every mythril stone you can find and secure every structure not of mythril’s foundation with it. Every open door or compartment must be locked and secured. It may sound foolish, but stability is most vital to the success of our return to Earth. Though it may sound like superstition, I find it…ironic that the Bible of the People of Edenreads, “The wise man built his house upon the rock. The rain came down, the streams rose, and the winds blew and beat against that house; yet it did not fall, because it had its foundation on the rock.”29

CHAPTER LXX30

“Sabrina…” She still didn’t respond. “Sabrina? Sabrina! Sabrina. SABRINA!” At last, her eyes fluttered into focus.31

“What is it, Haruka?” her voice, though flustered, sounded rather weak. Her mind was in another world, but I wanted to know just which world that was. 32

“What’s wrong, Sabrina?” 33

“Wrong?” A fake smile spread over her lips. “What could be wrong?”34

“You’re thinking about something,” I remarked, motioning to her eyes. “Only when something’s bothering you do you look like that. Its like you’re in another place.”35

Her smile vanished. Pulling a crumpled piece of paper out from her pocket, her true concern poured out her expression. “I think you can guess who this is from.” I took the paper in my hands, unfolded it, revealing one sentence:36

Come to the theatre entrance tonight if you wish to have peace between us37

“What does he mean?” For a moment, her eyes almost showed a fear I had never seen in her before. But at the same time, there was a hard bitterness as she asked, “Why can’t he just stop this? When will this nightmare be over? Isn’t it morning already?”38

Words ceased to exist in my mind. What could I say? “Does Ashton know?” I asked at long last. 39

“How could I tell him?” she sighed, her finger tracing across the desk, “It was my fault for getting involved with Jack in the first place. It was a foolish mistake, one I never meant to escalate to this point. Besides, its my problem; no one needs to be involved.” She tried to smile, but I only grew more worried. 40

“Sabrina!” I pleaded, leaning on her desk. “You have to tell Ashton! I’m sure he can do something—“41

“Can Ashton fight against Atlantis?” she whispered, clearly wanting to protect her boyfriend.42

An eerie silence fell between us, until I whispered “Are you sure he’s…Atlantean?”43

Nodding her emerald head, she explained, “I see him with Britteni almost constantly. I’ve heard them mention ‘the plan’ on occasion—what else could that be?” Pausing with a sigh, she added, “I’m worried about what they’ll do next—here, on Earth. How can we possibly protect all humans from them? What about—“44

“Sabrina!” I interrupted, a sport I was not terribly fond of. “Wasn’t it you that always taught me to trust God—that He is the one who has this under control? Follow your own advice: God knows what he’s doing,”45

~46

There she was: coming closer by the moment. He wasn’t quite sure how he felt about her; was she an innocent victim? An enemy to be vanquished? Though he had played the part of wanting to steal her affections, he had had no attraction to her. She was of Eden, he of Atlantis.47

And yet, time changes hearts. 48

Now, as she came into view, he nearly pitied her. Her emerald beauty would be wasted; what a shame… Who was that next to her? The young man squinted his eyes to notice a black haired man, his arm comfortably around her shoulders. Surprise could not begin to describe his shocked confusion. Never had they equated a second person into this encounter. Leaning on the ticket booth with wide eyes, he waited for the couple to walk into his presense. 49

“Jack,” Sabrina acknowledged, working hard to stifle the bitter hatred that tempted her. 50

“So you did come,” he masked with a smirk, not letting his enraged and alarmed emotions surface. All pity drained from his veins as he toyed with the idea of killing them both right then. 51

“That is the most important reason we do not kill them,” His Queen’s voice reminded him from another day, “We must be subtle in this world, give them no reason to suspect we are nothing more than one of their own kind.”52

“We’re on a date,” Ashton glared back threateningly, his arm subtly tightening around his girlfriend protectively. 53

“What’s this all about, Jack?” The emerald head pulled out a crumpled paper, the one Jack remembered as the note he sent her to tell her to come here. 54

His smirk only grew. “You should know full well. There are many who seek to take your life. I’m only offering to prevent such an...unfortunate occurance.” He began to draw closer, “You’d like to live, wouldn’t you?”55

Before another word could be uttered, Ashton’s usual calm and patience vanished as he threw a strong punch to Jack’s face. Clearly, Sabrina was just as shocked as Jack as he was thrown backwards into a wall, crisp blood beginning to run from his nose. “She doesn’t need you to protect her,”Ashton broke the silence, withdrawing his fist. 56

His girlfriend, looking up with complete shock, whispered his name, “Ashton…”57

“Let’s go somewhere else,” he took her hand tightly, leaving the shocked Jack leaning against the wall of the movie theatre, wiping off the blood from his face on his sleeve. 58

Eyeing the two quickly getting away, Jack muttered in a thick voice, “Of course, peace is a far fetched idea. The war begins now.”59

CHAPTER LXXI60

AN INCIDENT CONCERNING BROWNIES61

“Rei-what do girls like?” the blunt Akihiro asked for the forty-eighth time that day. Rei, whom he already knew would have no answer, was his final resort, for every other person who might have had an idea, he had already asked. He even had asked his manager Hyru, whom everyone knew had no life whatsoever. That was true desperation. 62

But why was Akihiro so desperate? It was because Haruka’s birthday was approaching, and he actually remembered. More than that, he was determined to get Haruka a present: to prove subliminally that he saw my as more than a “friend”. Maybe she’d get the idea without him having to take the plunge and say it, and they could go steady…yes…63

“Why?” Rei repeated louder, because apparently, Akihiro was hard of hearing. But he wasn’t hard of hearing. 64

“What? Oh-“ he hadn’t heard that yet. Either people just assumed he was referring to Haruka or they just dared not to ask. “Well…um…no particular reason…” he turned slightly red. 65

“Whatever,” Rei, obviously not interested in the continuation of this conversation, walked off towards home. 66

By the time Akihiro noticed, Rei was far off. “Wait!” he shouted after his cousin. “You haven’t told what girls like!”67

~68

“Girls like chocolate and clothes and bunnies, that sort of stuff,” Zane replied quickly, making Akihiro wonder why he hadn’t just asked his audio producing engineer (or just plain DJ) Zane first. 69

“Alright then….So what do I do?” 70

“You bake her brownies!” Zane pumped a fist with a grin of near excitement, “That’s very youthful and chivalrous.”71

Big words. Since when had Zane used words like “youthful” and “chivalrous”? Since when had Zane used words at all? Clearly, this was a new side to Akihiro’s business partner. Shaking his head to get back on topic, the not-so-smart scholar asked, “…Chivalrous?”72

“You rescue Haruka chan from the terrors of the oven,”73

“…What the heck are you talking about, man?”74

“…Never mind,” Somewhere in his mind, Akihiro believed that Zane had a secret passion for D&D.75

“Besides,” Akihiro laughed it off, then sighed, “I can’t bake.”76

“Not even for your love?”77

“My love?!” The brunet jumped at the word. Haruka…love…? Pretty much, he inwardly admitted with a shrug. 78

“Yes; your love. Woln’t you do it for Haruka?”79

~80

So there he was: in his mom's kitchen, avoiding breaking things as best as he could. Akihiro had a bad past of breaking things. But seeing Zane begin to pull out boxes of brownie mix, he couldn’t help but attempt to bang his head into a wall. Unfortunately, that broke things as well. 81

Rei, who often hid in the Hanazaki house from fan girls, happened to walk by. "Um..." he stopped, noticing his cousin and the DJ/village idiot (actually, as he thought about it, his cousin was the village idiot) fiddling with cookbooks. …Cookbooks? Wasn’t Akihiro banned from cooking…for all eternity? It was that cursed habit of breaking things. Hopefully that trait didn’t run in the family. 82

“Hey, Rei san!” Zane greeted, stacking the final box of brownie mix on top of a pyramid. It was enough mix to feed a pack of rabid bears. Clearly, Akihiro and Zane had no respect for Haruka’s already-failing diet plan. 83

"What the heck are you two doing?" Rei glared. "I thought you were banned from kitchens, Akihiro,"84

Seven year old Akihiro Hanazaki was known to the world as the absolute worst klutz ever to exist, along with the most obnoxiously curious child to live past the age of two. His fingers were known to be covered in some mixture of mud, food, and dust bunnies, seen by few to ever be clean. Today was not one of those days. 85

The boy reached up for the countertop, searching for something .What exactly that something was, he really wasn’t quite sure. Ah! But there he found it! His grimy childish hands found something metal and cold, grabbing it with all his seven year old might and pulled. Unfortunate for him (and even more so, Hanazaki san myself), it was an in-motion blender, preparing a rather elaborate cake batter. With his simple tug, the spinning bowl flew off, splattering the room with globs of batter, along with knocking over a precariously perched bag of flour, and pulling the power cable, which sent a loose spark onto said bag of flour, catching it on fire. True; it seemed highly unrealistic. But it did happen. And that was because Akihiro was very good at making things go bad. 86

The young boy sat there blankly, covered in layers of batter and flour, until his mommy came through the smoke, putting out the fire with her on-hand fire extinguisher. Let us just say that this was not the first time things burned courtesy of Akihiro. He was a natural-born pyromaniac without even knowing it! “You are not allowed in the kitchen ever again,” Hanazaki san scolded, and the words became law. 87

“I was seven!” Akihiro snapped back, laying down the cookbook he was looking at. 88

Rei, really not caring if Akihiro burned down the house or not, continued, “So-what are you trying to bake and why?”89

“Since when did you actually care about anything?” Akihiro glared.90

“Since I’m here,” Rei gave his best disinterested look, dulled green eyes staring blankly. “Stop dodging the question,”91

“We’re making Haruka chan some brownies!” Zane spoiled, laughing at Akihiro’s look of utter mordification. 92

At this, Rei’s eyebrow actually rose in interest. That very rarely happened. “Haruka chan? So is that who you’re interested in?”93

“So what if I am?” Akihiro’s eyes narrowed from the side, turning slightly red. 94

“…” Rei began to walk away, towards his room. 95

”HEY COME BACK HERE!” Akihiro yelled, getting angry.96

“Good luck,” Rei muttered, hardly audible over the clang up the stairs. 97

~98

Half an hour later, there was a kitchen covered in chocolate. Ceiling and floor, painted with fudge. It wouldn’t have looked too bad except for the randomly flung pieces of burned things clinging to the ceiling, and the bubbling masses of inedible substances overflowing from the sink. 99

Akihiro was banging his head on a wall. "WHY ME? Why does this always happen to ME?” 100

"It said to bake at 400o..." Zane read from the cookbook aloud, which too was covered in a layer of thick fudge. 101

Akihiro took a look at the smudged page. “This is an American cookbook. 400o Farenheit!” he threw the mutilated book across the room against a brown layered wall. 102

Rei, happening to pass by, looked at the flood of chocolate with slight amusement. “What’d I tell you?”103

“Shut it, you!” Akihiro shouted over the sound of the smoke alalarm going off (which really was a commonly heard sound in their house). But another sound rose above both. It was the front door bell. 104

~105

“A-akihiro kun?” I must have knocked five times or so. But no response. That’s when I heard the smoke alarm go off. Worried, I tried to jiggle the door knob.106

The door was open, so I just walked in. To my surprise, I was greeted by three of my classmates in a sea of chocolate, which expanded across the kitchen floor and dining room, and the smell of burned dog filling the air. . “Wh-what’s happening in here?” I asked timidly, trying to absorb the completely chaotic environment. 107

Not sure how to respond, Akihiro just stood there like the loveable idiot he truly was. Zane, in a swift motion, grabbed me by the shoulders, pushing me back the way I came, “You saw nothing!” he exclaimed, forcing me through the doorway. 108

“Ano-“ I began hesitantly, “Is—A-akihiro kun alright?” 109

“HES FINE!” Zane replied too quickly, closing the door with a hard slam. So I just stood outside, perplexed and slightly offended. 110

“You fool!” Akihiro ran to his partner in crime once he was able to reply. . “Now Haruka’s going to hate me!” he ran to the door, opening it with one great gust, only to find me staring blankly at the door. “Gomen, Haruka chan!” he greeted with sympathy. “My….friend, for lack of a better term, is a complete idiot and I can’t explain his problems.” 111

I nodded in understanding, yet just noticed the scents. Sniffing rather intently, I mused for a moment, and then asked with a giggle, “Are you baking brownies?” 112

“B-brownies?” Akihiro tensed. “What would make you say that? WE DON’T HAVE BROWNIES!” 113

He suddenly stopped talking, his eyes following me as I boldly reached for a large glob of chocolate on his forehead with an index finger, bringing it to my lips. After a moment, I smiled. “Not half bad! Better than any brownies I could bake…”114

“See? What did I tell you? She did like the brownies,” Zane interrupted with a grin. 115

“N-nani?” I blushed slightly, getting a faint idea where that train of thought was going. I let out a sudden gasp when I saw Akihiro begin to bang his head against the door frame. He had failed. He had failed as a person, as almost-Haruka’s-boyfriend, as a Hanazaki...He failed at life. 116

“ANGST ANGST ANGST” he muttered over and over again. 117

“What are you doing, Akihiro kun?” the auburn haired one, worried once more, asked softly, her hand reaching to his arm. “Stop it!” 118

“I FAIL AT LIFE!!!” he moaned.119

“What? No you don’t!” I looked at him pleadingly. “Please stop! Please!” I grabbed his arm softly, trying to pull him away from the emo door frame that, in my mind, had apparently spontaneously induced Akihiro into a mode of self-infliction. 120

“The brownies were supposed to be for you,” Akihiro stopped at the sound of Rei’s voice from the doorway. He turned around to face his on the spot appearing cousin, about to shout things that should not be repeated, except that he heard Haruka’s voice- 121

“F-for me?” For me, time stopped in that moment.122

“But I can’t even make flippin’ brownies,” and as quickly as Akihiro stopped, he went back into self-infliction mode. 123

“Nani!” I jumped, arms still laced around his. “But they’re great brownies! I love them! I’m sure if you made them, they’re the best in the world-“ I stopped, realizing what I just said, blushing a bit. But at least Akihiro stopped as well, looking at me a bit surprised. 124

“Now-onto the remnants of brownie batter!” Zane interjected, making Rei remind himself that he might catch stupid from standing through this dialogue much longer. Grabbing my hand, Akihiro led me into what remained of the kitchen. 125

I hid a gasp when I saw the walls dripping with a layer of fudge, but then broke out into giggles. Akihiro looked to me, very confused at this point. But that was rather common. After all, he had never lived up to his name, “Great Scholar”. 126

Before I could explain, I saw a fury of chocolate fudge fly across the room, hitting Akihiro straight in the face. Unable to keep myself from laughing, I felt a stream of batter hit my back. Rei watched from the stairway in the distance for a moment, but tiring of our foolish games, he continued up, hearing the sound of laughter and splattering brownies even from the top floor. 127

After a while of fighting with kitchen utensils and chocolate, I looked to the clock in horror, muttering about how late I would be for a Vital Best Friend Meeting/Bonding Day. “Arigato gozaimasu, Akihiro kun, but I probably should go.” My lips pursed into a bright chocolate coated smile. Giving him a goodbye hug, I added sweetly, “Demo…I think you’ll be banned from kitchens for a long time…”128