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Chapter One:
Dimensional Charming

Raguna sat at his desk, just finishing his test in English. It was quite easy, and he finished before anyone else. All there was to do now was sigh and stare at the wall. Raguna was a fourteen year old boy who had shoulder length blonde hair. He was wearing his favorite spring and summer outfit; a tan t-shirt and blue shorts. His shoes were these giant blue things that could hardly be called shoes. The only reason he wore them was due to how comfortable they were. He had somewhat pale skin that was definitely not tan. His only other distinguishing feature was his pale sepia eyes, or for those that don’t know, a really nice shade of brown. As others started to get up and hand their tests into the teacher, Raguna thought “Why is life so boring? Every day is the same. I go to school, play sports, and hang out with my friends. Nothing new ever happens…”

~ ~ ~
Meanwhile, in a cold, dark cave, a man stood silhouetted by a giant computer screen with a picture of the earth on it. Upon closer examination, this individual was in his later teens, and had freakishly spiky, gravity defying green hair. Yes, green. The only clothes that he was supposedly wear was a long, navy blue cloak. Pinned to the front of this cloak was a badge, with a strange metal diamond protruding from it. Suddenly, with out warning, the man asked out “ Bob Kat, are the preparations for the giveaway at Kei Konguki ready yet?” The answer came from a rather quiet and sad looking lump in the corner.

This lump was a humanoid like creature, that looked quite like a human, despite the large ears protruding out of his head. They looked like those of a cat. He also had apparent whiskers coming out of his cheeks, as well as a tail. He had shaggy brown hair, and was dressed in ripped rags, that hardly covered any of his upper body. He also appeared to have a very thin coat of fur on his skin, though it was hardly noticeable, aside from the fact that it made him appear a light brown color, and made him feel fuzzy. Around his neck was a shock collar of sorts, having numerous metal balls implanted in it, and an electric current so strong that it was visible, coming out of the front of it and shooting off in the direction of the man asking the question.

Bob Kat answered “Yes, Master. All preparations are complete.” His tone of voice was sad, as well indicated by his condition of clothes, as well as his overall aura.

Ignoring this, the man confirmed “Perfect…” before starting a long, evil “WAHAHAHAHAHAHA!”

~ ~ ~
Finally the bell rang. The day was over. Raguna started packing his things, wanting to hurry up and get home so that he could mess around on the computer, or play a videogame, or something. That idea didn’t last long, though. His plans were destroyed as he received a simple and seemingly harmless poke on the back.

“Hey Raguna, guess what we’re doing today?” asked a female voice. Of course Raguna knew who it was the minute he received the poke. It was his friend Arisa Sakura. She was also fourteen, and quite the popular student, being on the cheerleading squad and all. And, for some reason she seemed to wear a version of her cheerleading outfit where ever she went. Arisa always wore a headband in her long brown hair. It stretched down past her shoulders. Her eyes were a pleasant green color, and she was also wearing her shoulder strap bag. And, as usual, she was trying to force him to do something with her.

“What do you mean “We’re” doing today?” Raguna retorted. He really didn’t feel like being drug along today. She would probably just want to go shopping anyway.

“Well, I’m taking you to that giveaway at Kei Konguki today!” She replied happily. Of course, as expected. “Everyone will be there, so let’s go!”

“But I don’t want-” Raguna started before Arisa grabbed his hand. Suddenly, she started dragging him along, barely giving him time to grab his backpack. Soon, they were outside the school and half running toward the older part of town, somewhat by the ghettos, or as close as there was in their city. Soon, they arrived in front of a run down old store.

“Here we are!” Arisa announced. Sure, the sign read “Kei Konguki”, but it really didn’t look like the kind of place that would be having a giveaway aimed at teenagers. Yet despite the location, what Arisa said seemed to be true. There was quite a crowd going into the building. Raguna and Arisa were the last ones in. As they walked in, they both gasped in shock. The seemingly small building seemed to have this giant basement that seemed to be the size of about ten of the buildings that this room was hidden under. All throughout the room, there were several long tables, all loaded with every type of regular clothing and accessory that you could imagine. Everything from t-shirts and jeans, to anything that you would find an older teen hooker wearing. As for the accessories, there was all sorts of jewelry, hats, bandanas, and many other things.

One thing struck Raguna as odd, though. Above the main entrance, above the stairs that lead down to the room, there was a banner reading “Rules For the Giveaway: 1. You may only take one item. 2. You may only take items that glow to your touch. 3. Take a commemorative charm to go along with your item.” “Hey, Arisa. Don’t you find these rules a bit odd?” Raguna asked.

Arisa stared at him with an odd look on his face. “Um. No, not really…” She replied.

Raguna was slightly disheartened at this, and mumbled “Oh…”

Arisa, being her impatient self, was eager to get going. “Come on. Let’s start already.” She complained. Then, she decided to just take off, leaving Raguna to search on his own. The second rule was so stupid. How was he supposed to find one special item amongst the millions of articles of clothing there? However, as he looked around, he saw several people with these glowing clothes. Saying that the entire item glowed was an overstatement though. It seemed, as Raguna began to notice, that each thing had an identical little metal diamond on it. It stuck up a few centimeters, and came up to a point. It seemed that only the little diamonds actually glowed. With this on mind, Raguna began to sift through the first pile of clothes that he saw, to no avail. He was just about to start on another, When suddenly an extremely hyper and loud shout came from behind Raguna, making him jump.

“HEY RAGUNA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!” came the voice. It was that of Raguna’s best friend, Tala Ymizuko. Tala was also fourteen and a somewhat hyper sort of kid. He is one of those type of kids that is obsessed with music. Honestly, he always was wearing his pair of headphones, the kind with drivers. Tala had freakishly red hair, that just wasn’t natural, and always had it in a sort of messy fashion, always pushed back a little by his headphones. He had deep purple eyes, that always seemed to sparkle. His attire was usually somewhat dark, contrasting with his attitude. He always wore a dark grey sweat shirt, with a t-shirt underneath, usually also a dark color. The front of the sweat shirt was decorated in the chest area with a white skull design. The other interesting design on his sweat shirt was the crimson rose-like vine (rose-like meaning that it is like a vine with thorns coming out of it) that started on the left side, and wound downwards and to the right, going over the pocket as it went down. His other piece of clothing that he usually wore was regular jeans, that were a grayish color. These were very ordinary, except for the fact that they had the same vine design spiraling down the left leg, starting from the pocket and spiraling all the way down the leg. Then he wore skateboard type shoes. Anyways, enough about him.

After scaring the crap out of Raguna, Tala waved and asked “Hey, did you get your thing yet? I got this Awesome gauntlet!!!!” He seemed very enthusiastic, and emphasized his point by pointing at it with his left hand. Yes, it worked out quite well, because he was right handed, and it was a right handed gauntlet. It was actually decorated quite nicely. It had an X design in the middle of it, where the signature diamond was located. There were other diamond shaped jewels surrounding the x, but they were just that, jewels, or more specifically rubies. Not the strange still semi-glowing plain metal diamond. It had to be the least expensive part of the fancy glove, but that was un-important. Implanted in the wrist guard were pearls, spaced evenly about the entire circumference. The entire thing, save for the metal diamond was made of what seemed to be shined bronze, and very light weight. And the fingers had separate plates of bronze for each finger joint, of course, so that they could be moved. It looked really odd with his current outfit, but he seemed to be excited.

Answering his question, Raguna said, “Um, no, I haven’t. But a gauntlet…?” Raguna was still shocked that something like this would even be here, but then again leave it to Tala to find something like this.

Tala took his shock as sarcasm and his face quickly changed to anguish. Tala was kind of randomly emotional like that. “Yeah! Don’t you like it?!?” Tala asked. His face was truly priceless at that moment.

Raguna just replied with a generic “Yeah…” Despite his apparent lack of interest, he actually did want to hurry and find his item. He was slightly interested in what it would be, after seeing Tala’s strange gauntlet, and also he wanted to hurry and leave. Something about this room felt strange. Tala had decided to help him with his search, since Arisa seemed to have vanished, so they started looking through another pile. Raguna was slightly annoyed at Tala’s method, going off of what he thought looked “cool” and only looking at the things that fit that category. Raguna was left to sift through the rest.

After they had made their way down one whole table, they started on the next. Suddenly Tala let out an excited gasp. “Hey Raguna! I found your thing!” He exclaimed. This was the most enthusiastic one yet. He was like jumping up and down pointing at… fingerless gloves? That’s odd. Raguna figured that he had better at least try. He walked over to the pile, and lightly touched the diamond on one of the gloves. The diamonds on both gloves started to glow.

Suddenly Raguna was surrounded by a flash of light. A light feeling came over him and it felt as if he was floating. Then he blacked out for a second. When he came to, He was still standing, now with the gloves on, and looked around at the crowd. No one had even turned to look at the bright flash. Strange. Raguna turned to Tala. “Hey, didn’t you see those lights that just surrounded me?” He asked, confused.

“Nope, not really. However, the same type of thing happened to me when I found the gauntlet. Weird huh?” Was Tala’s answer. Despite random lights secretly surrounding people, and articles of clothing magically putting themselves on, Tala seemed un-phased. Same old Tala.

Well Raguna was ready to leave. Arisa had disappeared, but now Tala was there, and that was good enough. “Ok, let’s go” Raguna suggested to Tala. They headed over toward the stands where the random people in trench coats were giving out these little metal “charms” as they were called. The weird thing is that no one seemed to actually have a charm bracelet, so why everyone “needed” charms was beyond him.

They arrived at the booths, and chose one of the ones in the middle. As they walked up Raguna was about to ask politely for their charms, but instead, the man who, under closer inspection, was clothed completely from head to toe, despite the nice spring time weather, just grunted and kind of shoved a charm at Tala. This caught him by surprise, but he gathered himself enough not to drop it. If the charm was to be described as anything, it would be a gust of wind, or at least what it looks like when someone illustrates it. It was really strange, for a charm at least, but Tala seemed to like it. Then it was Raguna’s turn. The man still used only a grunt, but shoved two charms at Raguna. They were both in the shape of swords. One for each glove, he supposed. Now that he had his, Raguna was able to take a better look at the make-up of the charms. They were small and slightly thick, only like three millimeters, though. Also, the back of each charm had a diamond indent on the back that fit perfectly on the strange diamonds. So that was what they were for. They just wanted to make money off of a new collectible item. But that defied why they would be giving away things like Tala’s gauntlet, which had thousands of dollars worth of jewels on it. He could sell that on eBay in a heartbeat. Oh well. Raguna didn’t feel like pondering it much. He and Tala were finally headed for the exit, when suddenly they heard an irritated “Hey!” from behind them.

Arisa had re-arrived. She seemed kind of angry too. “Raguna! Were you just going to leave me here alone? Some friend you are!” It was then that she noticed Tala, who was also her friend, then again, who wasn’t? “Oh hey Tala! Nice gauntlet” she added, now happy. She also had extreme mood swings.

Trying to defend himself, Raguna commented “It was you who ditched me. I thought that you had left me.” Raguna actually didn’t believe this, but he had to come up with something. He then noticed the necklace that had appeared around Arisa’s neck in her time away. “Oh, hey, nice necklace by the way.” He commented. It also was a fine piece of jewelry. The cliché diamond was found in the center of the piece, but around it were pretty emeralds that complemented her eyes very nicely. Then, around the emeralds was a border of diamonds. It was all on a silver chain. Raguna got to thinking, “Why does everyone get jewels but me?” Sure he liked the gloves, but he couldn’t sell it very well if he chose to. “Sigh, whatever” he thought.
Arisa seemed to be softened by Raguna’s complement, and was in a much better mood. “Why, thank you!” She said cheerfully. She had been making a fist that she then let go of. In it was what Raguna assumed to be her charm. It was ironically a flame. Very similar to Tala’s but, well, you know, a flame. Weird. Where were all of the traditional race cars and palm trees? Anyway, she proceeded to click the charm into her necklace. Somehow, the charm looked a lot nicer just by being on the necklace. “Hey, do you guys like my charm? I think it’s quite charming!” She laughed at her own joke. Tala giggled a little too. Raguna just kind of stood there staring at them. “Ok, well I suppose we can go home now.” Arisa declared.

“Why thank you for your permission.” Raguna said sarcastically. This time all three of them laughed as they walked out of the store, toward home.

~ ~ ~
Raguna woke up to his alarm in the morning. He got up, showered, dressed, ate breakfast, and got ready for another boring day of school. The only interesting part would be that everyone would almost guaranteed wearing their stuff that they got today. And sure enough, as soon as Raguna grabbed his back pack, and walked out his door, a ring tone went off in his pocket. A new text message. Raguna opened his phone. “From Arisa” Of course. The message read “Hey every 1! Wear ur stuff that u got yesterday! Luv U! <3 -Arisa” Yup, now every one and their grandma would have their stuff at school. Arisa was known to have the largest contact list on her phone in the area. She had five-thousand and counting. Sure she didn’t actually know most of these people, she just got whoever’s number that she could get. Raguna sighed and walked on.

Before too long, he ran into Arisa. They lived close enough to the school that they just walked instead of riding the bus. And they lived close enough to each other that they just walked together. They exchanged “Hi’s” and continued on. Neither of them were good morning people.

They had walked for three minutes when suddenly a voice flashed through Raguna’s head; “Connection Established; Interrupted; Re-directing; New Location Chosen” Raguna was about to ask Arisa what had just happened when suddenly a sort of hole appeared under the two of them, and they started falling and yelling, through an endless hole that was pitch black, aside from what appeared to be the northern lights all around them. All that Raguna could clearly see was Arisa, silhouetted by the lights, but he could make out small figures falling all around him, appearing as small dots. Suddenly the yelling stopped, and every thing went black.