//------------------------------// // Registration // Story: My Little Anime: Manga Is Magic! // by Alsvid //------------------------------// Spike opened his eyes, feeling a little dazed. "Ow...what the heck was that all about, anyway? Yeah, good joke, Twilight. Very funny," he grumbled. Something warm and soft was pressing on him. He found himself in a cramped little bedroom, lying on a soft mattress that was level with the floor, covered in a thin blanket. It was oppressively hot. The chirping and buzzing of insects outside assaulted his ears. In front of him was a desk with a computer on it, surrounded by books, paper, pencils, and pens; behind him was a bookshelf, and next to him was a wastepaper basket. There were posters of smiling girls in various forms of dress hanging on the walls, a half-open closet nearby displaying quite a neat little rack of clothes. The door was shut and seemed to be locked, from what he could see of it. Spike took all this in calmly, attempting to reason with himself, in spite of the little needles of nervousness cramping his belly. If this was a joke on Twilight's part, he wasn't really jiving with it at all. "....okay. This is freakin' me out, here. Did Twilight use one of her spells on me? I don't remember this at all!" He looked down at his perfectly normal human-looking hands. He was wearing perfectly ordinary blue pyjamas. "Hahahaha! Whoah, these things are...different." He spread his fingers, flexed them, and curled his hands into fists. "Unreal!" he whispered, watching the bones and muscles working under his smooth skin. He leaped out of bed. At least walking on two legs was the same. Spike unlocked the door and opened it, looking outside. There was a hallway leading to some stairs, all very small and compact. Whoever designed the house favored very cramped architecture, he thought to himself. There were two doors, one of which was marked "RYUUKO's BEDROOM". A toothsome smell of frying eggs wafted up the stairs. Spike ignored that one and went in the other door. He found himself in a bathroom with all the usual accoutrements - toilet, a shower with an odd little stool, a bath, a sink, towels, soap, and so on. Initially, his heart gave a nervous tremor at the sight of the mirror, but, as no eerie red light came shooting out, he let himself relax. "Twilight wouldn't try the same trick twice, anyway," he said to himself. A human boy with strange, slit-pupiled green eyes, a slim, fine-boned face, and a thin body, stared back at him. His bright green mohawk was there - how did it remain so neat? Must be magic, he thought to himself - as were the green frilled ears, but otherwise he looked totally indistinguishable from a human boy in pyjamas. Spike put his hands on his face and tugged at his cheeks, pulling a face in the mirror. "BLEH!" he said, at his reflection. Then he twitched his lips upward and made a face like a rabbit. "Nii-san." A soft female voice. Spike whirled around. A girl, shorter than him by a head, was standing behind him. "Nii-san," she said again, insistently. She was holding a spatula. She looked...strangely, a little like a feminine copy of him, except her hair was long and decorated with a large pink ribbon. She was wearing an apron over a blue-and-gold sailor suit, complete with a pleated skirt and knee-socks. "...And you are?" Spike said, raising his eyebrows at her quizzically. The girl's green eyes instantly welled with tears. "Nii-san...hidoi!" She ran out of the bathroom. He heard her footsteps stomping on the stairs. "Aw, c'mon!" Spike lunged after her, but she was already retreating down the stairs. "Great! My one chance to meet up with Twi and find out what happened, aaaaaaaand she's gone. Just great!" fumed Spike. He darted out of the bathroom after her, feet pounding down the stairs. She was angrily tossing pens, books, and other odds and ends into a bookbag when Spike caught up with her in the cramped little living room downstairs. "Hey, I'm sorry, okay? Ryuuko!" The girl looked up at him, dashing her hand over her eyes irritably. Spike peeked at her bookbag, reading the nametag. TAGUCHI RYUUKO*, it read. "I was...really tired! Honest! I got, like, no sleep at all last night. I wasn't trying to chase you away or anything." Spike looked at the table. There was a plate with a steaming omelette on a bed of rice waiting for him, emitting a very pleasant smell indeed. A decanter of soy sauce, a bottle of ketchup, and some chopsticks - resting on a chopstick-holder - were arranged neatly around the plate. A tall glass of juice sat a little ways to the right. "And that does look pretty good," Spike admitted. His stomach rumbled loudly. Abruptly, Ryuuko ran over to him and hugged him tightly around his waist. "Stupid Nii-san...I'll forgive you this time, anyway." She bounced away from him, abruptly turning a dark shade of red. "Y...you'd better hurry up and eat, or you'll be late!" Spike was fumbling with the chopsticks, when, suddenly, something clicked in his head. He soon wolfed down half the rice and egg, adding liberal amounts of soy sauce to the rice, and ketchup to the egg. "Mmmf. Whaffor?" he muttered, around a mouthful of food. "School! Silly Nii-san!" Ryuuko said, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. "Eeeeeeeeeeeeeh?!" Spike hastily swallowed the mouthful and stood up, still shoveling food into his mouth. "When...*munch munch*...does it...*munch*...start?!" "Eight-thirty!" "And...what time is now?" Spike said, with a sinking feeling in his gut. "Eight-o-clock sharp, Nii-san." "Shimatta!" Spike began a mad dash for the door. "Wait! Nii-san!" Ryuuko called after him. Spike whirled around to face her. "I put your bookbag together while you were in the bathroom..." "Thanks, Ryuuko." Spike said the name slowly, tasting it. It was alien to him, and yet familiar somehow. Their eyes met, for a brief moment. Ryuuko flushed a dark red. She shoved his bookbag into his hands. "Get dressed. I took your clothes down for you, too. Now I'm going! I have to get to school too, y'know." --- Dressed, washed, and with only twenty minutes to get to school, Spike dashed down the road, all of a lather, panting heavily. "Shouldn't...eat...so...many...apples," he puffed, a stitch stabbing away at his side. Something hit him squarely in the chest, driving all the air out of him and sending him flying to the hard asphalt. He heard a shrill scream, and blacked out momentarily. When he came to, a slim girl in a red-and-white sailor suit was lying atop him. "Owww...." She sat up, massaging her purple-haired head with one slim, elegant hand, an abandoned piece of toast lying at her side. "Rarity!" Spike almost shouted. He could recognize those long royal purple curls anywhere, even if the owner was this strange-looking human girl. Yet, there was something familiar about her pale, pointed face, and the light blue eyeshadow. "Spike!" Rarity squealed. The sound of a bell rang out. They looked at each other. "We're late!!!" they both wailed at the same time. Rarity shoved Spike back down and scampered off, clutching her bookbag. "Hey! Hey, wait! I don't even..." Spike shouted after her, struggling up to his feet and sprinting after Rarity, who was rapidly disappearing down the street. Rarity sped on, unheeding. More students were pouring into the street. Spike found himself in a press of students, all surging and pushing and stampeding down the street. "Ow! Watch it," he complained, as a particularly pushy student shoved their way into his side. The student turned around, revealing himself to be another boy Spike's age, with a haughty look upon his broad, open features, his bright red eyes glittering. He had short black hair, and wore a white bandana along with his red-and-white gakuran school uniform. "Don't 'watch it' me, Spike-kun. That's how you greet your old pal, Wantanabe Hiro? I'm only, like, the best Kendo club participant ever at Ryuujin Jakka Gakuen." He threw an arm around Spike's shoulders, dragging Spike closer to him in what was obviously meant to be a chummy, friendly manner. Spike laughed nervously. "Right. Sure thing, 'pal'," he said, sounding wholly unconvinced. Hiro glanced meaningfully at Rarity. "Getting fresh with the sexy ladies before school, eh? Sooooo jealous~! Hey, why don't you introduce me to her friends?" "If I can find them, Hiro, you got yourself a deal," Spike said. "I was kinda hoping to find out where they were, myself." "Oh?" Hiro cocked his head, giving Spike a sideways glance. "Hey, did you hear what the Studen Council President said? She's going to be upping the standards for all the school clubs in a little while. Said that they need to even themselves up. Said she's sick of all these disgusting pigs in wigs pretending to be doing something worthwhile after school." "Geez. Talk about controlling," Spike grumbled. "You bet. Anyway, here we go. In through the gate - that's the ticket. Watch your head," Hiro said helpfully, as a much taller student swept past. Spike only just managed to duck before the student's elbow swiped where his head had been, moments before. --- Spike found himself in a classroom with twenty other students, being droned at by a wizened old man who looked as if he was twice Granny Smith's age, and sounded thrice that number. He introduced himself as Sensei Otomo Motosada, writing it out on the blackboard in large characters, and then waited as they stood up, bowed to him, and then sat back down with a flurry of chairs scraping the floor. The room smelled antiseptic, of disinfectant, pencil shavings, blackboard dust, and chalk. Some of the female students were wearing scent. It tickled Spike's nose. "Eto...eto...ah, here we go. Class, listen carefully," the teacher rasped weakly. He adjusted his eyeglasses with a quivering hand. "On the numbering of years. The citizens of Umato* count each year since the ascendancy of Her Imperial Majesty, Celestia. It has been twenty thousand years since she ascended; thus, it is the year Twenty-Thousand, in the Era of Our Empress Celestia, ruler of the Dai-Umato-Teikoku*." "We can recall an incident in which one of Her Imperial Majesty's grand Shogun took it upon herself to rewrite the calendar with a foreign system, but the Empress summoned her Ashigaru and her Samurai to her capital. This resulted in the Battle of Oo-Edo-Uma, which was the former name of Ponykyo, the de-facto Capital City of the Dai-Umato-Teikoku. The Shogun was toppled and forced to commit ritual suicide in the Imperial Palace, their title given to one of the peasant Ashigaru captains who had fought bravely under the Sun Wheel Banner of the Empress." Spike was deathly bored. The droning of insects, the rushing of cars on the street, the steady murmur of the teacher's voice, all mingled together to form a most soporific sound. He found his eyes closing. Then something happened that jolted him wide awake. Rarity stabbed him in the neck with a pencil. It was more of a little jab, but it annoyed Spike out of his reverie. "Ow!" Something fell on his desk. Instinctively, Spike snatched it out of sight of the old teacher, and unfurled it beneath the cover of his desk. Then, he glanced downward. What he saw made him suck in his breath. His heart pounded. "SPIKE... ...DO YOU REMEMBER THE MIRROR?" ---