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Child of No Nation

Prologue

I don’t remember much about day I was born. But then again, no one really does.

Many people say it was raining. They say it was a cold, icy rain, almost like a hurricane. But it only lasted one day. All across the nation of Japan, it rained. Expect on the beaches, where the ocean met the shore.

The hospital I was born in was across from a beach. One of the doctors that delivered me said right after I was born, my mother ran out of the hospital and into the ocean.

The doctor begged my mother to come back into the hospital, where it was warm and safe, but mother wouldn’t move.

She just stood there, in a soaking wet hospital dress, staring out at the sky.

You see, on the day I was born, they say every single star was out shining in Japan. Over the water, constellations were everywhere, even the constellations that weren’t suppose to be seen during that time of year.

But mother wasn’t looking at the starts, she was looking at something no else could see.

“Aurora….” The doctor heard my mother say. “Aurora Borealis.” That’s what my saw.

From that came my name.

Aurora.

Aura.

I don’t remember much about the day I was born, expect it was the day my mother died.

I don’t remember her much, but then again, no one really does.

Child of No Nation

Prologue: End.

Chapter One:

So why am I in Europe?

“Oh my God! See that’s the new girl I was telling you about! The one with all white eyes!”

“She doesn’t belong here. This school is for up-scale students, not street riffraff!”

Feh.

Who the hell says riffraff? This is the fricking twenty-first century! Speak like normal people, not some stuck-up rich kids.

“I hear she keeps a pig in her room, how vulgar!”

I whirled around in my chair to glare at the girls talking about me behind my back. I may not speak English as a first language, but I understood enough to know when I should pull out my evil death glare.

“EEK! Look at that barbaric stare!” One of the girls said, in a over dramatically way, “Look! Look! See her devil eyes!” She gave an over dramatic gasp, and pointed at my face.

I bit my tongue, hard, it was my first day at a new school and I already had made one enemy to man; just about any girl I ran into.

“My eyes have medicated contacts in them. I have an eye condition.” I snapped. Back in Japan I probably would have been issued a punishment for speaking out during class. I glanced to see what the teacher of my up-scale, super rich class was doing. He glanced up at me from his game of stacking cards, his facile expression seemed to say, ‘handle it yourself.’

The overly dramatic girl pushed her strawberry-blond hair over her shoulder. “And what about you short hair? You look like a boy.” I glanced back at her annoyed.

“What about your hair? It looks pink.” I answered calmly. She opened her mouth to give some snarky response, but I had already put the earphones to my ipod in and began to blare my loud metal music.

First day of school.

First day of the rest of my life.

Man, the rest of my life is going to suck.

I leaned my head against my desk, and began to wonder how exactly I ended up at this strange school in the middle of no where, Europe.

Exactly one week ago, I was fifteen, happy, and not in Europe. But it was the eve of my sixteenth birthday, and that was my….undoing. Getting old.

“Miss Aura?”

Timid voice, shy, must be a maid. I leaned my head off of my pillow, pulled my earphones out, and turned my face towards her.

“What’s up?” I asked.

“Um dinner is ready Miss…” She said pulling in a cart with a variety of food on it.

“Very good, your dismissed.” I said waving my hand at her. I looked up at my dinner, and grimaced, it was some foreign food which I couldn’t pronounce.

“Spoink! Spoink!” I called out to my pet. She was an adorable little pig. The small animal looked up at me, knowing that she was about to eat. I placed the plate down and opened my window to get out of my house to get some real food.

Half an hour later I got of the train in a suburb area on the outskirts of Tokyo. The cool air brushed through my short hair. I headed down the side walk on the familiar path to dinner, when something interrupted the night’s silence.

“Pi pi pip pi pip pi pip pip pi!!” My cell rang. I reached into the pocket of my cargo pants and flipped open my cell.

“Yeah? What do you want?” I snapped, knowing exactly who was calling.

“What do I want? That‘s almost harsh! Is that any what to treat your best and closest friend?” Came the teasing reply from the caller.

I rolled my eyes and smiled.

“Hello Nike, why am I being blessed with a call from you?” I said, the warm night air mixing with my breath as I walked along the path.

“Much better. Okay, so I got this textie from Ookami, and he said you were heading out to the nightly dining spot.” Said Nike. Nike Eclipse was older then me by one year, not to mention my best friend in the whole world. He wasn’t the smartest boy in the world, but I loved him anyway.

“Feh.” I sighed, and stared up at the night sky, “Why does my brother insist on having some one watch over me?”

“Cause you look like a boy who get in a lot of fights,” Nike replied as if it was the most natural thing in the world.

“But I’m a girl, damn it!”

“Yeah, well you can’t exactly tell from the short hair and the baggy sweatshirts. No matter how big your chest-”

“You’re going to end that sentence right there.” I replied.

“Fair enough. Anyhoo, I am calling to tell you that I can’t come to our nightly dinner place. Apparently there is a big to-do today that my dad’s dragging me and Alex to.” Alex was Nike’s identical twin brother. I was close to him as well. Mainly because the three of us, and my brother, looked foreign in the nation of Japan. The twins were British, and my mother was only half Japanese. I don’t know what her other half was, but my brother and I inherited the foreign blood.

“A big party?” I asked, stopping outside of my destination.

“Yeah, but want to hear the amazing part? It’s your house, and for you.” Nike let out a laugh. “And you’re skipping it!”

“Well, can you blame me? First off, I didn’t know about it, secondly I would have to wear one of those super uncomfortable dresses that the latest trendy designer made. Not mention the food and company would suck.”

“At least in one of those dresses you can tell you’re a D-cup,” Nike replied.

“Shut up.” I sighed, I was use to those comments from him. Nike, after all, was a bit of a pervert, but he’d only say things like that over the phone, other wise I’d hit him.

“I’m betting it’s for your-our-birthday.” That’s right, Nike and his brother had the same birthday, only we were a year apart. That’s actually how we kind of met. Nike’s mother and my mother met in the hospital on the night I was born. Mrs. Eclipse took her twins in for a check up. And saw my mother walking onto the ocean….. And well the rest is history.

“A sweet sixteen? My Gawd, how lame.”

“Let me guess, you wanted just a simple dinner with the four of us?”

“No, I want to go to Disneyland.” I smirked and herd his laughter.

“Happy pre-birthday.” He said, “I have to go, Alex is complaining that we have to go.” My best friend said, then he did a high pitched imitation of a girl. “Gawd Alex, could you be like anymore in, like, a hurry. Like, I have to look good. My man is going to be there!”

“STOP ACTING GAY!” came the distinctive voice of Nike’s twin. “YOU KNOW IT FREAKS ME OUT!”

“That’s why its fun!” Nike sang.

“I‘m hang up now. But before I go, happy pre-seventeenth birthday!” I snapped my cell phone shut and put it into my pocket. I knew when I went home I would be in trouble, but how much would it really be in if it was a surprise party for me? After all I didn’t know that when I left.

Thus is my attitude toward life, very, very uncaring. But that’s how kids who have everything grow up, especially if you have a dad like mine, one who is to afraid of you to punish you.

“Aura…. Is it you?” Came a voice inside the house I happened to be leaning against. The voice was almost a whisper, but I knew it well. Hearing that voice was like hearing the wind.

“Yes it is.” I said, walking in to the house. “It’s Aura.”

“Happy sixteenth birthday!” I stepped inside the tiny house to see a beautiful woman sitting at a table full of food. Long, black locks swirled around her body, and her pale skin seemed to glow. She was the closet thing I had to a mother, and I was the closest thing she had to a daughter.

“Thanks Aoi, but I turn sixteen tomorrow.” I said sitting down at the table next to her.

Aoi turned to face me, her eyes half open. Even after her fifteen years of being around her, her eyes still made chills run up my spine. She was blind, and her eyes were just inky puddles of black. No pupils, no light reflected in them, just black and white.

“I don’t think you’ll be here tomorrow.” Aoi replied, pushing a bowel of noodles towards me, indicating that I should take some.

I blinked a few times before replying, “Not…not coming, Aoi, I’ve only been coming to your house every day since I was six, what is going to change between us.”

Aoi tilted her head, and her black locks fell a crossed her face. “You should know by now things aren’t always as safe as they seem.”

I watched her slowly, her face remained expressionless, but I knew behind her inky eyes there was sadness. Her husband had left her. He still had some money sent home and one of his servants took very good care of Aoi. But it still make me sad. Aoi was a very weak woman, she was fragile like a porcelain doll. What’s worse is that she has a three year old son that her husband doesn’t even know about. The day after he left she found out she was pregnant with a baby boy.

“I won’t leave you like that man!”

“He will come back. He left because he gotten a doctoring job some where over seas. And I am right you will come back, with Nike and both your brothers to visit me.”

“Aoi! I’m not going anywhere!”

“Please be quite. Your going to wake Kyo. And I finally got him to go to sleep. It’s very hard to get a three year old to bed.”

And that was it. She dismissed me.

The rest of the night went on with light conversation, then I headed home to go to expect my light punishment.

Getting of the train in my neighborhood I noticed the moon was out in full shine, and the streets were empty. The street lights were on , and uber bright, meaning that it was super late. I walked in the dark, the silence of the air, no wind rustling leaves, no noise of late night parties going to one in the morning. And then….

Thump.

I paused.

Thump. Thump. Thump.

I shifted my weight so I whirled around to see where the noise was coming from. After all, I was use to the silence, since I walked home with it everyday. But some random noise, no, that was not what I was use to.

Thump. Thump. Thump.

I held my breath. I had located the source of the noise. It was coming from the roof tops of the huge houses in my neighborhood. Was in some burglar jumping from roof to roof?

“Do you find the world’s hiding you potential?” Scratch the burglar idea. Who ever was on the roof had begun to sing.

“What if you never get it back? To know, to know, that some ones hiding your destiny. They ripped it right from your hands. Does it really hurt? Being deprived of what your human soul thrived on.” The singer was female her voice foreign and deeper then most Japanese female voices.

“To fear, to lie, that’s the rhythm that we live our live. Feel the human hate. Feel the human hate. It radiates from the soul.” I began to walk faster, the song was beginning to creep me out.

“ To hope, to wait,” thump, “that’s all that left to dream about, saving your life.” Thump, “But your already doomed, it’s bigger then you, then me, for it’s our destiny.” Thump. “It’s your destiny.” The singer was following me. I broke in to a sprint, and then a full blown run. But I could still hear the weird song.

“To die, to lie, buried in the ground, hiding from the world, around us. Think about that now. Just think about that now. Just think about it now.” Thud!

“Oh Crap!” I shouted, the singer girl had jumped off the roof and on to the road and was only a few feet behind me.

“To bleed, to cry. The sanity inside of your soul. It fades as you go on. Is this you? Is this me? Is this who we are meant to be? In the big picture? In the big picture?” She was gaining on me, about ten feet away. Luckily I could see my house coming up.”

“To cry, to cry, that what to nights all about. All about-” I had reached the gate of my house, pressing a button that will send my picture to the guard on duty so he would know to let me in.

“-On the eve my sixteenth birthday!” Okay, if my watch was right, it was my birthday, and that made the song one thousand times creepier, resulting in me punching the button repeatedly.

“What I want, I don’t even know-” She was about five feet away from me, I turned to look at the girl, but chill rand up my spine. I had t get in my stupid house! NOW!

“I am I really that hopeless.” I could feel her reaching out, to grab the hood of my sweatshirt. What was she going to do to me? What ever it was I didn’t want to find out.

“Screw this!” I shouted as my hand left the security button. I grabbed an iron bar on the gate and began to scale it. The girl watched me. I could feel her eyes on me. But she didn’t follow. Instead she turned and hummed the song to herself as she walked along the side walk away from my house.

I jumped off the fence and on to the warm pavement of my driveway. My heart pounded in my chest, and I sat to catch my breath. That was possible the weird thing that has ever happened to me. And not just because of that song.

Because she had my face.

Chills ran down my spine, not to mention the rest of me. Despite the warm summer air, I was freezing. Not to mention, very, very freaked out. I pushed myself up, and walked up to my house.

As I pushed open the very lager, overly decorated door, I shouted, “Hey, you’ll never guess what happened to me.”

Maids looked up from where they were, cleaning the floor, and every other surface of the house. My brother, Ookami looked up from his hand held video game dressed in a tux, complete with a backwards baseball cap. And my very timid dad standing next to a rather old woman I didn’t recognize.

Graying hair, and winkles obscured her face from my vision, but I could see her eyes well enough. They weren’t the typical almond shape that most Asians had, plus they were blue. I struggled to find the right words to described her.

“Grandma?” I said at last. This got me a very loud laugh from my brother, a giggle or two from the maids, and even a suppressed laugh from dad.

“No, you, brainless twit!” Came the old woman’s response, followed by a whack on the head from a fan she held.

“Ow! That hurt!” I snapped, I ripped the fan from her hand and tossing to one of the maids. “Well if your not grandma, what the hell are you doing in my house.”

“Um, Aura, you see, we had a…. sort of party tonight. For her,” my father said, pointing at the old hag, “you see, when your mother….Erm… left us. She had left a sort of will. It stated that Miyuki here, is your legal guardian upon your sixteenth birthday.”

I paused.

Nothing was heard, no brooms sweeping away at the crumbs the party guest left, no noise of people breathing, no beeps from my brother’s game. It seemed the whole house was waiting for my response. I drew in air, unsure of what to do. Finally a response came to me.

“Um…What?”

“I am your legal guardian, you twit.” Snapped the old hag know as Miyuki. She narrowed her eyes at me, as an attempt to unnerve me. I wouldn’t let her win, but I had no idea how to battle the ageing dragon.

A sudden question came to mind. Why? Why did she have power over me, why did dad let her?

“Why is that? Dad, aren’t you…. My dad, which makes you my guardian?” I asked.

Dad looked down at his shoes, and shifted his weight, “I-I couldn’t interfere with you mothers wishes.”

“Ri-ight. Well I can see that you people enjoyed a little to much wine tonight, so I am going to go to bed.” I headed past them when Miyuki grabbed my arm.

“Don’t you disrespect me, young lady! Or should I say young man, from the looks of you, I say you wouldn’t be able to tell a soup spoon from a regular spoon!”

I grunted and attempted to pull my arm away from her, but she tightened her grip. “Let go, you old bag!”

“And such rude manners too! First you skip the party, you come home at this un-godly hour, and you call me names!”

“First off I didn’t know about the party, secondly I have no curfew, thirdly, believe me there are a lot worse things I could call you.” I pulled harder as an attempt to repossess my arm, but nothing works. Her hand was starting to hurt.

Apparently it showed on my face exactly how much it hurt, because Ookami stood up and walked over to us. “Let go of my little sister!” He snapped.

“And this one is where she got the rudeness from!” Miyuki stared at my brother, “Look at you, both your ears are pierced! Twice, no less! And your awful dyed red hair!”

This earned a laugh out of me, after all, Ookami’s hair was naturally red.

“I shall be taking this one too!” The old witch. My father nodded, looking rather afraid of her. “Though it may be to late for him, seeing as how he is almost eighteen….”

“Wait, where are you taking us?” I said, nursing my arm, for she had finally let go of it.

“To Chimera Academy, in Europe.” Miyuki’s voice echoed in the hallways. She was taking us away, far away from our little safe heaven of Japan. Where we grew up, where we lived, where our friends were. I didn‘t know what to do. This strange woman had come into our home and was taking us away, and there was nothing I could to. “Now up to bed, both of you have two days to pack.”

“Why mom?” I groaned. I leaned back on my bed. My little Spoink resting her head on my knee. “Why would you do something like this?” I stoked my pig’s head and was granted a happy little grunt from her.

“What’s weirder is the fact that mom made a will so young in her life.” Ookami said opening all the gifts that the party guest had brought for me. His green eyes glowing with excitement when all the wrapping paper was off. “Hey, another Mp3 player!”

“It’s your.” I said picking up gift that Nike and Alex had left in my room during the party. I opened it slowly, pulling apart the aluminum foil used as wrapping paper. Ah, a romance novel. Only Nike would know my secret addiction to romance novels. I set it aside and tried to hold back tears.

“We’re not going to see them for awhile.” I sniffed, I picked up Spoink, “Or you.”

“Hid her in your suitcase. Know will know. As for Alex and Nike, the old b***h was talking to their dad. He’d do anything to get rid of those two. Thus is life as a corporate CEO.”

“Well maybe Chimera School-”

“Academy.”

“Academy won’t be so bad.”

Man was that ever an understatement of my life. So here I sit, a week later, in Europe, not having fun.

“Hey! Hey! Are you listing to me?!” I opened my eyes to see the snarky pink haired lady in my face, I think out of everything here, pink hair is my least favorite. And believe me there is a lot to hate here. Including the fact that they separate boys and girls at this school. Meaning that I don’t get to see my brother or the twins.

“I’m trying not too.” I sat up, looking up at the strawberry blonde. She narrowed her eyes, evilly.

“See, she has no manners,” the girl said to her friends, who laughed.

“Well can ya blame me, Pinkie? With you in my face, it’s hard to enjoy with my music.” I attempted to turn up my ipod, but Pinkie stanched it out of my hands.

“How dare you call me Pinkie. My name is Celine Belle! I am one of Frances finest citizens!” Pinkie, Celine, shouted.

“Well I am sure France is glad to be rid of you. Unless we are in France, where exactly are we?” I gave her my best, I-really-don’t-care-about-your -existence look. She wasn’t fazed. The bell rang and Celine picked up her bag, no doubt a Louie Vuitton or a Gucci or something like that.

As for me, I had to find out my new room.

I looked at the slip of paper that the headmaster gave me. I was suppose to be sharing a room with two other girl. From what the headmaster said they were suppose to be the top students, not to mention exceptional nice.

I rubbed my eyes, my contacts were begging to hurt. A lot. I blinked back tears, but it was no use. I took them out of my eyes and put them in the case that I kept in my pants. That was another thing that had to go. Pants. From now on, I’d have to wear a designer uniforms. Which include an ugly, plaid skirt.

It was waiting for me in my room, along with little Spoink.

I came to my dorm room. Touching the door knob, a feeling of dread ran through me. According to the white board on the door, I’d be sharing a room with the creepy Celine girl, and another girl named Pass Cipher.

I opened the door to my room to see my roommates.

And, there across from me sat a girl that looked exactly like me.