At Marie Florence High School, the lunch bell rang at exactly noon, signaling the race to the cafeteria for one of the limited dessert treats. Those who would rather be thrifty or simply preferred their own home cooked meals chose to eat in their classrooms or on the roof deck, or wherever else they could sit down and dine with their friends.
Having bought four sandwiches and a carton of juice from the cafeteria, Kylie was on her way to the courtyard where she and Yumi usually ate together, when a young man almost a foot taller than her blocked her path and rested a hand on the wall. He was tall, had a slight tan and dark hair, and would be what most would consider handsome. Strapped to his back was a guitar case, and in his hand was a red rose, held towards her in offering.
"Hey there, I don't suppose a beautiful angel like you has any plans for tomorrow night?" he said smoothly as he started to lean closer. "If you come with me, I'll promise to show you a fun time."
"No thanks!" Kylie immediately answered with such explosively cheerful energy that it startled him. "I'll be working an experiment on some artifacts I uncovered. The sun means heat, right? So maybe there's some significance if they are exposed to different thermal levels! I wonder if the guys at city hall or any other antiquarians have come to the same conclusion. No, I don't think so, or they'd be releasing more info on the internet and those history channels. It still doesn't explain the other symbols, but I'll figure it out! Perhaps the materials they're carved on are associated with the emblems? That might make sense. Mhm! It just might work."
As she went off on a tangent, oblivious to anything else, the boy who had tried to ask her out felt a headache coming. "Wait, wait a second," he said bewilderedly, but the girl was already walking away. "Damn."
Another boy walked up to him and started rubbing his fingers together. The rejected young man sneered and dropped a money bill into his hand, earning him a pat on the shoulder.
"Told you she's immune, Miguel," his associate said. "MacHallen's not like other girls, at least from what I've gathered. I don't think it's a religious thing, and I'm pretty sure she doesn't swing the other way either."
"Suppose she just doesn't have a romance gland in her, let alone the steamy version of it," Miguel concluded disappointedly. His acquaintance raised his eyebrow at his use of roundabout terms.
"How about her friend, um," Miguel tried to ask before consulting a small notepad filled with the names of female students. At least fifteen names had been crossed out, indicating a chain of successful conquests. "How about Yumi Manaka?"
On her way to meet up with Yumi, Kaira Lynette MacHallen caught her chatting with three other schoolgirls. Yumi was a fairly popular girl, but it was more due to her kind, outgoing, and cheerful nature than anything else.
"Hey! Whatcha talking about?" she said with an eager grin as she came over. Those currently accompanying Yumi felt a sudden urge to leave as she came closer, although the rose-headed girl didn't seem to mind their reactions and waved back at her best friend.
"It's nothing, MacHallen," one of the girls said, getting up, an action quickly followed by her two companions. She was a dame with pale skin, narrow eyes, and long dark hair with blunt bangs. "We were just catching up."
While she had said it in a friendly voice, she held no love for the red haired girl, and dismissed herself peacefully for Yumi's sake. It went unsaid that she and the other two, along with most of the school's female populace, generally found being around Kylie to be either exhausting or annoying, if not both; and that wasn't even taking into account how many of them felt that her natural, curvy figure was wasted on someone like her.
"So Yumi, I've been thinking it over last night, and I think I've figured out how to find out more about the stuff with the sun and white circle symbols," Kylie began as she sat herself down and unpackaged her meal, completely forgetting about the company she would have been unwelcome in.
"Oh?" Yumi said, willing to listen while she dug into the lunch her mother had packed for her. It was enough positive encouragement for the Scot.
"Remember that pendant I gave you, the one carved from white limestone?"
"Mhm," Yumi answered with a nod before popping a croquette into her mouth with chopsticks.
"It's been mostly the same with the other stuff I've seen that has that emblem. Although they've both been on a lot of bronze stuff, the ones with the sun are usually carved into white limestone or gold—although I couldn't get my hands on any of those ones, while the one with the big white circle is usually on black soapstone or silver. At first I thought they were from different time periods, you know, like some tribal dynasties for the people who lived here way before the city was founded. But why do they contrast each other so much in terms of shape and choice of color? What if they were actually from the same timeline, somewhere around the bronze age; two sides opposing each other?"
"You mean there was some kind of sun tribe, and a moon tribe?" Yumi inquired in an attempt to understand her friend's line of thought.
"Yes and no," Kylie answered. She pulled out her smartphone and showed her friend images of a sun etched onto white limestone and a white circle painted on black soapstone. "They do seem like that, don't they? But that doesn't answer why there are also depictions of crooked lines or a stick figure for those under the sun, or why there are sometimes small shards of crystal or glass on the stuff with the white circle. Maybe there's more to this stuff, like roles in the tribe, or something else, something we can't see. I'm planning on experimenting on some of this stuff by treating them with hot and cold. Maybe that'll reveal something hidden on their surfaces or something."
"You sound excited about this," Yumi noted with a smile, although she was only barely able to follow half of what she said.
"Of course! It'll be a huge breakthrough in my research my hunch is right," Kylie said while tapping on her phone's notepad. "I told some dude holding out a rose about it too. He was weird. Doesn't he know he might hit someone with that thing?"
A man holding out a rose to her? Did she hear that right? If he was trying to flirt with her best friend that way, he wouldn't get anywhere, the poor guy.
While most of the girls and a few guys in the school didn't like getting caught up in Kylie's pace, there had been a good number of young men who tried to approach her. From what she had observed, most of them were really just lusting for her cute face and bouncy body, an infatuation that would be short-lived once they realized that all attempts to woo her would go completely over her head.
Once, an upperclassman had tried to be as direct as possible without having to resort to sexual harassment. He had taken both hands of the redhead while asking her out straight, only to be shut down completely when she offered him the position of pack mule for her next expedition with Yumi.
Yumi looked at her friend, whose mouth was more occupied with scarfing down her second sandwich. The strawberry blonde had known her best friend long enough to know that she legitimately had no idea what the boys wanted out of her, and didn't care to find out. She had always been a person with a one-track mind, not that that was a bad thing either. At least she was very determined with her personal goals.
As for Yumi herself, she had been asked out on numerous occasions as well, but had kindly and politely turned down each one of her suitors. And when they tried to be forceful, she promised them that if they would get involved with her, they would have to accept Kylie being with them all the time. That usually worked, to her relief. It wasn't that she had no interest in the opposite sex—far from it, as she possessed a sizeable collection of romance novels and often enjoyed watching soap operas with her mother—she simply didn't feel that way towards anyone yet, and was not actively looking for relationships either.
As the two ate lunch together, Kylie spoke up again. "Hey Yumi, you heard about those recent "night beast" sightings?"
"'Night beast'?" Yumi repeated in a request for clarification.
"Yeah, the local tabloid says that people have seen more of this huge furry monster the past few nights. Someone even claimed to be a survivor from an alleged attack; he looked pretty messed up in his picture."
"So it's a real danger?"
Kylie shrugged. "Maybe? I dunno. It could just be some escaped zoo animal or someone with an awful sense of humor."
"That doesn't really make it any better."
"Relax, as long as we're all off the streets before it gets really dark or something, we're probably safe. You can get away on your bicycle anyway, so that's not really a big issue."
"I suppose," Yumi said, her mind now preoccupied with both this news of a monster as well as the possible connection her friend had theorized about her pendant.