The Mysteries of Love, Time & Fortune Cookies

Chapter 1: Our Adventure Begins

Amber sighed as she swung her schoolbag, on the way to another boring old day in class. It wasn’t that she had no desire to learn that made her so reluctant to get to school; she was an okay student, slightly above average, but nothing special. No, it was the fact that school was so tediously repetitive that made it so unappealing to the girl.

Every day the teachers would teach would bless their students with knowledge that was from the chapter after the chapter they had studied before, and, as always, the information would be completely useless. There had yet to be a day, or even a single second of a day, where Amber had found a use for Calculus or knowing the properties of the element Bismuth or other such knowledge that were not related to school in one way or another.

School was boring. Boring, boring, boring.

This stinks, she thought, kicking a stone that was in her path. Why can’t all the teachers decide to play hooky and skip school? Or why can’t a space ship show up and take the school to an inter-galactic zoo, or…

POW!

She had been so focused on daydreaming, that she neglected to watch where she had been going. She paid dearly for that carelessness by walking face first into a lamp post.

“Ouch!” She shouted, a hand flying to cover her nose which definitely felt as though it had grown to the size of an apple. Or a watermelon. Either way, it hurt. “Who put that there?”

Amber glared accusingly at the innocent lamp through blurred eyes. Obviously, it could not give her an answer, being an intimate object, but she wasn’t really expecting one. Her nose was not broken, fortunately, and now, all she wanted to do was get far, far away from the lamp and pretend the embarrassing incident had never occurred. Any hopes that she had walking away from the incident with her pride intact, though, were shattered when she heard the laughter.

Oh, great, Amber thought, trying to compose herself as she quickly spun around. There are 973,672 people in San Jose, and the only one to see that was him.

And sure enough, who else did she see when she turned around, but Will, wearing the same smirk he went through life with on his lips.

Amber did not like Will one bit, not since the incident in kindergarten when Will had told her she could fly if she jumped off the top of the slide and believed hard enough. Amber never got over the mortification of actually believing him and attempting it, resulting in a broken wrist. Will never forgave her for taking him seriously and getting hurt, leaving him in a boat load of trouble. He was convinced she had done it on purpose. She was convinced that he had corrupted her innocent young mind.

Amber turned around again, intending to ignore him and continue on her way to an oh-so-wonderful day at school. She did not want to ruin her day this early on by talking to him. But Will of course had to ruin her plan.

“Is it ok?” he asked, appearing next to her. He slung the school bag he had been carrying in one hand over a shoulder so that both of his hands were free. Just in case.

Amber blinked, startled. “What?” Was he actually being nice to her?

Will’s smirk widened as he answered. “I meant the lamp post. Do you know how expensive they are to replace and just how many of our resources they deplete?”

Amber turned bright red with anger. Only her intense dislike of cursing stopped her from calling him very vile names. But she had no opposition against violence. She raised her hand, intending to punch him into the next century. Or at least into the next week. Anywhere that was not near her was fine.

“HEY!”

The unexpected shout startled her so much that she missed her target and ended up uniting her face with the sidewalk. She whimpered and rubbed her poor nose as Will laughed, several feet away from her. Her nose was never going to be the same after this horrible morning.

“Goodness, you’re so violent, Amber.” A familiar voice said, as a hand entered her vision. She grabbed it and pulled herself up. The owner of the hand, her child hood friend Ruby, shook her head at her in mock disappointment.

Ruby and Amber had been friends since even before the two had been old enough to be held captive in school. Like Amber, Ruby cared very little for school, though in her case, the dislike was connected more to the fact that it involved actually working than to boredom. The young girl disliked anything that involved her having to do any sort of labor, physical labor especially. Most likely, it was that trait that had led the two girls to stay friends for so many years; Amber was too clumsy to be of any good in sports and Ruby couldn’t be bothered to even try. It was hard not to become friends when you’re always the last two picked for teams in gym.

“But only to Will,” Ruby continued on, tapping her check with a finger. She gave her friend a knowing look. “I wonder why?”

Amber brushed the dirt from her clothes, turning her head away to try to hide her pink checks, and replied dryly. “I refuse to even consider what you’re implying.”

“That’s Amber alright” Another voice interrupted. Amber didn’t have to turn her head to know that it was Edward, one of Will’s annoying friends. He was the undisputed class clown in school and even outside of school. In Amber’s opinion, the only one more annoying than Edward was Will. Her morning was entirely ruined now.

Edward elbowed Will in the ribs, causing him to wince. “Always using big words that no one understands to change the subject.”

Ruby frowned and looked down her nose at him. She was the tallest girl in their grade now, a fact that she loved to lord over to the boys. “Well, I understood her perfectly. Not everyone has the vocabulary of a two year old.”

Edward glared right back. “Oh yeah? Well, we all can’t be nerds like you two.”

“We’re not nerds, we’re intellectuals!”

“Nerds! Geeks!”

Will and Amber simply stood and watched their friends who had interrupted their fighting engage in battle themselves. They had learned from experience it was best not to get involved in their fights.

Ruby and Edward did not despise each other like Amber and Will did, but no one could say that the two got along. Ruby hated immaturity, while Edward’s entire existence seemed to revolve around it. Ruby hated to move unnecessarily while Edward was forever jumping around like a hyperactive teddy bear. Ruby took great care to be neat and clean; Edward still had last month’s lunch hidden somewhere in his mess of a backpack. No, those two did not get along at all.

It was likely that their verbal war would have gone on far longer if not for a fortunate interruption. Though, once Amber saw exactly who had made the interruption, by no means would she dub it fortunate. Her morning was entirely doomed now. There was no salvaging it.

“Will you all just shut up? Noise is a form of pollution you know!”

The unintentional peacemaker glared at them from behind her spectacles. It was Trinity, an undisputed bookworm who rarely was seen anywhere without a book in her possession. She had been trying to get past the four for awhile now, but everyone had been too caught in Ruby and Edward’s fight to even notice her. And, now, she was understandably quite annoyed with them all.

Though, truthfully, Trinity was always annoyed at somebody about something. Amber had never seen Trinity smile, she wasn’t even sure of the girl knew how to. The bookworm rarely talked to anyone; she was always studying, getting the best grades in the class, her nose always buried in a book. Amber was certain that Trinity loved going to school if only for the fact that it gave her an excuse to be near books.

“Look, there’s the biggest nerd of them all.” Edward said, only to hide behind Will a second later as Trinity sent him a bone chilling glare.

Edward didn’t like Trinity for the simple fact that she was at the top of the class and, in his opinion, thought she was too good to talk to anyone of them. Amber had once been under the impression that Trinity spent all her time alone because she was shy. One minute in her company had completely put an end to that assumption. Trinity was by no means shy; she just preferred the company of books over people. And she had no problem with letting others know that.

“Just wait,” she replied, continuing to glare at him, her hands on her hips. She looked quite menacing for a high school kid. “One day, you’ll be working for me. And I will remember each and every insult and deduct it from your paycheck.”

“Scary.” Edward whispered, still ducking behind his half amused half scared friend. Amber and Ruby giggled at the sight; it was always amusing to see those two put in their place.Then Trinity turned her gaze onto them. Her eyes zeroed in on the bag hanging at Ruby’s side/.

“Where did you get that bag?” she snapped, pointing at the clearly new black bag, lined with white fur.

Ruby beamed and launched into a detailed explanation. She loved to show off her stuff whenever she could. Anytime she got went into this mode around Amber, the girl would just shut her ears and wait for her to tire out. For someone who hated to work, she sure could talk.

“Isn’t it cute? My father imported it for me, all the way from France! No one else here has it--”

Trinity interrupted before the explanation got any more detailed and long winded. Pointing at the fur lining, she declared. “I don’t care about that. That’s real animal fur isn’t it? It’s from the Alaskan white wolf! They’re so close to becoming an endangered species! You can’t kill them fur to make a bag that can’t even hold all your school books!”

Ruby ignored her, pretending to yawn. “Big deal. Who cares if there aren’t a few more scary old wolves in the world?”
Amber decided to attempt to make peace before the argument got any more heated and troublesome. She knew from experience Trinity did not like it when people causally dismissed what she considered huge issues. “Come on, let’s just forget about this and get to school.”

The two girls ignored her in favor of glaring at each other. Edward and Will stood off to the side, far enough to not be involved, but close enough to see the entire show. They were pleased that the bookworm had forgotten all about them but were not about to just leave and miss what promised to be a very amusing show.

“Not with that puppy-killer.” Trinity said turning her head away from Ruby, who repeated the gesture, in the opposite direction.

“No way am I going to be seen with that Big Bad Wolf supporter.”

Everyone turned their heads to Ruby who blinked at the sudden attention. “What?”

Amber shook her head in exasperation; sometimes her friend said the oddest things. Pushing that aside ,she attempted to stop the fight once again.“C’mon, let’s just--OW!”

Something quite heavy, and much unexpected, bounced off of Amber’s head before landing neatly onto the ground at Edward’s feet.

“What is that?” Edward asked curiously, picking the object up.

“A bag?” Will said, coming closer to get a better look.

“That hurt” sobbed Amber, rubbing her head which, she was sure, was sporting a huge bump. She was completely ignored.

“Let me see.” Ruby snatched the bag from Edward, using her height to her advantage, and opened it to discover….

“Fortune Cookies?”

“Why would anyone throw a bag of fortune cookies on Amber?” Will mused taking the bag from Ruby. He smirked at Amber who was a bit miffed at having been ignored. “Hope they didn’t break.”

“I’ll show you what breaks!” Amber shouted, losing her tempter then and there.

Will jerked backwards, laughing as the punch aimed at his head narrowly missed him. Unnoticed by anyone, one cookie slipped out of the bag and fell onto the ground, near Amber’s right foot.

“Hey, let me see.” Edward said, shoving Will forward in order to get the bag.

Unfortunately, he pushed a little harder than necessary and sent his friend stumbling into Amber, who hurriedly tried to move away from her arch nemesis. However in her hast, she tripped and headed face first to the ground, completely crushing the cookie in the process.

“Owww…”She moaned, clutching her nose. Her nose was sure to be severely disfigured now, she thought morosely.

“You broke it!” Ruby said, rushing forward.

“No, I think my nose is fine.” Amber started.

“I meant the cookies” Ruby interrupted, picking up a piece of paper from the crushed remains. She completely missed Amber’s embarrassed and annoyed face. “Oooh, the fortune!”

Trinity snatched it from her hands. “Give me that, I’ll read it.”

The boys decided that it was in their best interest to just agree from a safe distance. The bookworm pushed her glasses up her nose and read:



“What does that mean?’ Amber said, standing up and brushing her uniform off.

No one had a chance to answer. A swirl of light surrounded them, and then they were gone.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
This is a story that I writing for a manga contest at the local library. I write the story and my friend will turn it into a manga (it's kind of like a comic book, or a graphic novel, if you didn't know). I haven't finished it yet, and I would really appreciate any feedback, advice, or critisicm. Thank you!

EDIT: REVISED! And, the contest is going on again this year, so this time, I'm going to try and turn this into a manga! ^^ Since last time was an utter failure with my friend losing all of the pages at the last minute

This was like super interesting, i felt like i was actually starting to read an already published book, that's how good it was..

I loved it!!
I agree with Hazel, it did feel like I was starting to read a already published book!!

PS: It has my name in it lol!!

That was a great story!

I loved the dialogue, it made you really sound like it was a published book!

Really? Thank you everyone! You're all so nice, and I'm kind of stunned. A published book? Awesome! I've always wanted to publish a book! Anyway, I present to you the next chapter! P.S. You're name's in it, sweetkiss? Cool, I'm psycic! Kidding, I'm not. I'm just plain old Moonlite Knight. Anyway, please tell me what you think, thanks!
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
Chapter 2: Guests From a Different Realm

“AHHHHHH!”

The scream shattered through the calm that could only be found early on Saturday mornings, before the neighborhood brats awoke and stuffed themselves full of sugary cardboard bits and cartoons. The ones responsible for the disturbing of this calm however, were not hyper adolescents, but 5 teenagers who, due to an odd twist of fate had landed in the area they were presently occupying, rather than school. The aforementioned teens were currently lying in a bunch on the ground, near an area that had once been home to a respectable number of trees.

“Owww…” they all moaned, sitting up, and rubbing their various aching body parts.

“Did we get hit by a truck?” Edward asked, rubbing his head. “Because this is not how I pictured the afterlife to be like. Where’s the flying babies and lesser begins that I can boss around?”

“We didn’t get hit by a truck,” Trinity snapped, straightening her glasses. “For one thing, we were on the sidewalk.”

“So?” Will immediately replied, sticking up for his friend even with a face full of mud. “Like the truck couldn’t serve off the street to hit us?’

“I don’t know about the truck” Ruby said, still seated and fixing her hair. “But I’m quite sure you were dropped on your head as a baby, Edward. I mean, really, ’flying babies’”

Edward’s indignant “Hey” was drowned out by a pained groan.

“Ruuuuby…can you get off me now?”

“Oh,” Ruby said only now realizing exactly who she had been sitting. “I didn’t see you there Amber. You didn’t you say something?”

Amber could barely lift her head up but she managed to send Ruby a glare that promised vengeance.

Giggling slightly nervously, Ruby got up.

Edward smirked, and said. “Why’d you get up? It was so much more peaceful while Amber was getting cozy with the dirt.”

Amazingly, Amber recovered enough to attempt to strangle Edward, as Will moped in the background.

“Do you guys enjoy behaving like a trope of circus performers?” Trinity snapped. She had been scouring the area while her classmates had been behaving pretty much like she had told them they had been behaving like. “Have you even considered the idea of figuring out where we are?”

“Why? Where else can we be, except San Jose?” Will replied, his trademark smirk on his face.

Trinity glared in reply. “The last time I checked, San Jose did not house a recently cut down forest. Did you even bother to look around?”

Startled, the four, for the first time since their arrival, actually looked around. They were in the middle of no where. There were no homes, no buildings, no school (yay!), and nothing else that made San Jose, San Jose.

Ruby panicked “Where’s the mall? And Daddy’s office? And the air, it’s just too,” she paused, searching for a word.

“Clean.” Trinity said, sniffing the air, an expression of awe on her face. “Absolutely no air pollution. Where are we?’

“In boring old San Jose of course.” Edward replied, attempting to make jokes to dispel his growing anxiety. “Because I don’t remember getting on a plane, or car, or anything.”

“Unless you girls knocked us out and kidnapped us,” Will put in, eyeing several enormous boulders nearby with suspicion.

“Are you crazy?” Amber replied. “If we kidnapped you, then we certainly would not be here with you two right now. You couldn’t pay me to stay in the same room with you.” She had obviously not forgotten the dirt comment.

Will stuck his fingers his ears and ignored her. Meanwhile, Trinity had made a startling conclusion.

“It was the fortune cookie.” she announced. Everyone turned to look at her. The girls wondered if she had finally cracked form the strain of not reading a book for so long. Will was trying not to laugh out loud, as he had no wish to be given a lecture that used for complex words than simple ones.

Edward replied. “Finally someone believes! I told you they were trying to take over the world!”

Everyone turned to look at him.

He smiled. “What? Didn’t you ever think it was strange that there are little pieces of paper in those cookies that say things that no one understands. They’re brainwashing us with their fancy words!”

Trinity coughed, maybe to hide a laugh, or maybe to attract the attention that she had lost.

“Anyway, I think that the fortune cookies are responsible for our current predicament.”

“What did she say?” Edward asked Will.

“The fortune cookies are to blame.” He replied.

“I knew it!” Edward punched the air in victory.

Ruby discreetly tripped him.

“I get it,” Amber said, looking thoughtful. “When you read the fortune, we ended up here!”

“So it’s your fault!” Edward said, his face full of mud.

“No!” Trinity protested. “Amber’s the one who squashed the cookie!”

“But Will’s the one who pushed me!” She replied, pointing at the culprit.

“Because Edward pushed me!” he replied, momentarily forsaking their friendship.

“Hey, you were the one who grabbed the cookie!” Edward replied, glaring at the traitor.

“Hey!” Ruby shouted, getting everyone’s attention. “At least we know one thing.” She smiled sweetly at them. “It wasn’t my fault.”

Quite understandably, everyone was so surprised that they that they could only stare at the little rich girl. And they didn’t notice the ever-growing shadow behind them, until it was practically on top of them.

“What--” Trinity whispered before falling silent as she realized exactly what was obscuring the sky. Her classmate were in similar states of shock.

It was a enormous spaceship. A defiantly out-of-this-world flying saucer. As they watched in stunned silence, the ship fly over to the large boulders of rocks that Will had noticed before. A light blue colored stream of light shot out from underneath it, directly onto one of the boulders, which then rose into the air. The spaceship the carried the over-sized rock, and placed it in the clearing on their right. It repeated the action several times, while they only stared in stunned disbelief. And then, the spaceship flew away.

As it left, Amber was quite she that she heard cheers and war cries, but she still to stunned to care much.

“Was that--” she whispered.

“Yeah,” Will replied, for once not smirking.

“It’s Stonehenge.” Trinity whispered, in awe, not disbelief. You could practically see the stars in her eyes. “We just witnessed the making of Stonehenge!”

“W-who care,” Edward stuttered, taking a step backwards, only to fall down, right onto a forgotten fortune cookies, which, of course, broke.

“Opps.” he said, getting up. He snatched the fortune before any one else
could, and began to read.


“NO!” Trinity shouted, but too late. The swirl of light surrounded them, and that was that.

Ohhh this is so super interesting. I like how you make up how stonehenge got there since no one really knows. I mean who knows, maybe that really did happen huh? Hehe, great story.

Wow, good update!!
But there is one part that I read that I read that was really confusing...

She had been scouring the area while her classmates had been behaving pretty much like she how she had just told them they were behaving like.

The bold line is where I got confused!
Other wise it was a really awesome update!!!

I think she meant to say:

She had been scouring the area while her classmates had been behaving pretty much like she had told them they had been behaving like.

Yup, that's what I meant. Thanks for catching and mixing my mistake you too I'll fix it in a minute. And thank you for your opinions!

The dialogue is very well done. They sound like real people, and not too Sueish.
Sometimes the narration seems a little forced.

A familiar voice said helping her up. It was Ruby, her childhood friend.

That just seemed a little annoying. It would be better to ignore that information until later, or explain it more in depth.

Great job, I'd love to see the rest of it.

Nice addition. The beginning of the chapter, at least I thought, needed some work. The atmosphere of everyone talking just didn't seem real.

Moonlite Knight wrote:
“Oh,” Ruby said only now realizing exactly who she had been sitting. “I didn’t see you there Amber. You didn’t you say something?”

Don't you mean why didn't you say something?

Moonlite Knight wrote:
Giggling slightly nervously, Ruby got up.

That really didn't make any sense.

The ending was nice, though, I think the first chapter was better.

I LOVED IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The first chapter has been revised! Please check it out! I'll post the revised second chapter and then the third tomorrow (I hope) , I want to go through and edit them before I post them, because right now, they stink ^^

Is it "inanimate" when you wrote "intimate object"? Isn't childhood one word, not "child hood"?

“Scary.” Edward whispered, still ducking behind his half amused half scared friend. Amber and Ruby giggled at the sight; it was always amusing to see those two put in their place.Then Trinity turned her gaze onto them. Her eyes zeroed in on the bag hanging at Ruby’s side/.

Is that backslash supposed to be there?

Well, that was just pointing out possible punctuation/typing errors. Apart from that, good!

...

Wow... Tiny little mistakes and yet she bothers to point them out...

And I said update~! Not rewrite~!

[EDIT] Just in case anyone's waiting for the next chapter, it's going to be awhile because my laptop crashed and I lost everything on it, including the third chapter which was done and just needed to be edited before posting. Yeah, I was an idiot and I didn't save a back up, so I have to start all over. Urgh. I'm an idiot. [END EDIT]

Lol, thank you 2b for taking the time to point out those mistakes! I for one am glad you did that, 'cause I completely overlooked them before. ^^

Update? What is this update you speak of? Does not compute
Kidding, sorry.

I will be updating soonish with the third chapter! And I rewrote it because when I reread it, ,it was so horrible that I just felt compelled to rewrite it >>

Blame him! *points at random person*

Manga plot, huh?
I'd like to get a hold of those people.
There's a thing called the 'Magical Forest' in writin' theory. It's the place where the character goes to after 'The Call'. The Forest is the magical land, the other side of the rabbit hole, the fairy realm that the character goes to after the Call, the event that 'changes their life forever'. Almost all stories have these two things, the Call and Forest (They're metaphors, mind you). The bone I have to pick with mangas is that they make the Call and/or Forest too obvious, blatant. Nearly all of them follow the same formula:
Normal schoolgirl/boy is in boring school, normal life. Few people like the main character, they're don't fit in. They meet someone, find something, discover a secret, and bam, they lead a double life killing monsters and meeting new, interesting, possibly romantic, people in the new, magical dimension to their life.
I can almost see the chibi angry faces and chibi crying faces in the first chapp here, along with the usual manga dialogue; everyone's emotions, personalities are clearly defined: Bully, clumsy, bookworm, messy, neat, arrogant. All can be described in one or two words. The dialogue is similar to the regular manga back-and-forths: Yelling at each other, exaggerated emotions, antagonizing humor, so on. All the same lines, repeated with alterations.
You can almost see Orihime rubbing her nose and her dark-haired friend (THe name escapes me) defending her, or Uryu marveling at his fur-lined satchel.
Second chapp is just a continuance of the above comments. I like your style of writing; if only you lost the manga character-set and the regular formula. Most mangas are supposed to be kind of fun and light, but you have to throw in something new, interesting. Otherwise, it's your plot against two hundred identical plots and characters, with only the title different.