Bloody Moon

Chapter 1: Blue Warning

  "Maki? Makiiiiiii! MAKI WAKE UP!!!"

Maki jerked awake. He looked up to see Luna right in his face and fell off his chair in surprise. She whacked him on the head with her textbook.

"Ow!" he complained. "What was that for?" He rubbed his head as he gathered all his school books and shoved it in his book bag.

"It's to wake you up and get your brain going, duhhh." She rolled her eyes. "Besides, it's almost the end of school! Summer vacation! High school!"

She twirled around and stopped abruptly as Maki crashed into her. He fell over and groaned, but Luna seemed unfazed. She continued skipping around, hugging her books as tight as she could, her hair bouncing around as her eyes were filled with excitement as they walked on the smooth, paved path leading them home.

"I wonder if there are high schools for criminals," she wondered. "It would be fun to be a villain. You know, everyone fears you and stuff, right?"

"What?" Maki paused in his tracks. "A villain? Surely you don't want to be that? Besides, heroes and villains don't even exist!"

"I was just saying it for fun, you know!" She replied but for a second, Maki thought he saw Luna's eyes flash angrily. He didn't understand what could possibly make her that mad, but he decided not to question it.

Almost everything about Luna was mysterious in a beautiful way. Nobody understood why her hair was silver. Nobody understood how she kept smiling even with new bruises everyday. Nobody understood why she not only decided to give herself a new surname, but chose Thana, or "death". But Maki knew. She always loved the night and the stars. She always smiled to hide the fact that her father would torture her constantly. While she had a rough personality, she used it to stand up for those in need, even if it meant getting bruised in the process no matter if she was a girl or not. But they never accepted her.

It wasn't fair.

Luna looked back and noticed him staring. She stared back curiously with her head tilt, inspecting every part of him.

"What?" said Maki.

She gave a slight smile and said nothing. She turned back and started picking dandelions as they walked back to their neighborhood.

"You know, the world is quite beautiful even when it's corrupted with eternal evil." She slowly picked off the petals of the dandelion and let it fly away in the summer air.

"The world may be full of evil, but I believe we can all fix it if we learn to use our abilities for good," said Maki. "After all, you gotta accept your emotions, right? Perhaps all these criminals are just afraid to let people know the real them!"

Luna stared at him. She sighed and continued walking and continued walking toward a graffiti-covered bridge.

"You would never understand Maki."

"What do you mean?"

"You're just too optimistic."

"Too optimistic?"

"It's very sweet of you to think that even monsters have good in them, but it's not the truth. Monsters are monsters."

"They have emotions too, right?"

A moment of silence passed as they looked at each other.

"I guess I shouldn't be arguing about this. After all, your beliefs led you to being my friend, regardless of my anger," she shrugged. "But you need to understand that the real world isn't like that. Nobody accepts you. You gotta get them to fear you to accept you as their ruler once you show them the consequences."