Prince of the Moon (Prologue; 2K words)

The shadow sat against the wall, looking at the girl sitting on what used to be his bed. The girl, who had the strangest hair--red, and long on one side and shaved on the other--stared into space where he had been just a moment earlier. The shadow was sure that she had seen him, but now he wasn't so sure that she could see his kind. No matter. He wasn't here for her anyways.

However, he was quite intrigued with her. He had never seen a tan person inside of the asylum before, nor had he seen freckles since he had died. In fact, there had been no one inside of that room for months, not since that brunette named Meredith, who was taken away after she had gotten better from her psychosis. He was sure that she would never see the light of day again.

The new girl turned her head to the position that he was currently in. Damn, he was definitely seen. The girl smiled, showing off some braces, and turned back around. From the new view of her face, the shadow could see that she had an eye-patch on--reminiscent of a car accident, perhaps?--that looked like something from a television show that his brother watched when the shadow was a live.

The girl laughed a little bit, giggly with a hint of insanity. "I know you're there, shadow-sprite," she said. She had quite the accent. Obviously, she was an English person of some sort. "You don't need to hide from me. I do hope that you guys don't go after dragons like the last time I encountered some. That was a very..." she seemed to be searching for the word. "-interesting encounter, to say the least. The name is Crystal, by the way. Crystal Realiza. And yes, I am a part of the Encantan royal family. Well, I was. Long story."

Ah, so this girl is Encantan royalty, but she's locked up in a horrible mental asylum all the way up in Oregon when Encanta was an Spain-owned island in the Caribbean. He wondered what her story was, though he wasn't sure if he wanted it from her. She didn't seem like the type of person that could talk in a cohesive story. A bit random, for lack of a better word.

He also wondered where she got the English accent. How did she end up in England when Encanta was a dream home for many people? For the record, the shadow had heard rumors that parents didn't allow their kids to leave Encanta in the first place--to make sure that the kids grow up in /their/ lifestyle--so how did she get into England, anyways? She couldn't be more than sixteen, if she could see him.

"I am seventeen, for the record. I am aware that I am short, but when you talk to your little shadow-sprite friends, I want you to know how old I am before calling me twelve or something. I am most definitely not that."

Wait, how was she able to see him? Only people sixteen and under could see him and all of the other shadow-sprites born out of the asylum. If Crystal was seventeen like she said, it would be impossible for her to see him, unless she was a-

Oh.

The shadow raced out of the room, blowing Crystal's hair into her face. The girl huffed in annoyance and fell onto her bed, sighing. She, in fact, hadn't even known that he was there. She was just testing if there was.

Her laughter started of small, like a giggle, and then erupted into a full-blown bout of intense, insane cackling that echoed through the nurse-patrolled halls, sending shivers down the spines of all who heard it. Any outsider who would be inside of it would have stared in the direction of the noise, thinking that it was from a truly insane individual.

Crystal's laughter died down and she sat, thinking about when she was going to get her new roommate. Of course, she didn't come to this place for nothing. If she wanted to get him back, she needed to infiltrate this stupid place, even if that meant acting completely insane while doing it.

--

Medford's inhabitants went along with their work that day, ignoring the wails of the many sirens that went past their work buildings. They did, however, look up when the low-altitude reporter helicopter went past their windows with its helicopter blades dangerously close to the glass. Some people on break ran towards the televisions, where a reporter was talking to the camera.

"Just now, the police received a call from an anonymous number from what seems to be a man with a raspy voice claiming there to be an unconscious teenager in an apartment building in north-eastern Medford. Me and my crew are heading over now to investigate with the police.

There was muttering to the side as a blonde woman appeared to get a phone call. She nodded to the reporter, who turned back to the camera.

"We just got a call from the police. They had found the teenager, unconscious and with what looks like shrapnel stuck all over his body. According to them, the teen is bleeding in many places and has a definite head injury. They are evacuating the child now."

On the TV's, the people of Medford watched as a stretcher went inside of the building. A few moments passed with them looking at the shaky footage of the pavement, and then the stretcher came back out with what looked like blood and metal on a corpse.

"Even though it looks bad, the medics claim that the teen isn't as bad as it looks. According to the officials, most of the blood is coming from what appears to be old shrapnel wounds. They believe that he might have attempted to take them out himself and then passed out from lack of blood."

There was a wobbly shot of the ambulance driving away. However, the police cars were still there, and there were men and women in uniforms and flashlights looking around.

"Apparently, the building is very dark, so they had to use flashlights. There were also no inhabitants inside of the building, so the police wonder how long the teen has been there," the reporter said. The reporter looked to the side at the blonde-haired woman, who was still mumbling inside of the phone. "The police ask if anyone could identify this male so they can try to find who had put the shrapnel inside of the teenager and placed him in the abandoned building in the first place. They believe that this was not, in fact, an accident, but an attempted murder."

A picture of a bloody male (it was obviously phone footage, some people noted) appeared on-screen. There was shrapnel piercing his forehead with blood running down his face. His one eye was closed, with the other forced open by a pale hand to reveal a bright blue eye. His skin, though bloodied, was smooth and had a few freckles populating it here and there. His pale skin contrasted with his red hair. It was evident that the teen was very handsome before the shrapnel had gotten into him.

"Now, we will go to Stan for a more close-up view on what is going on. What's going on, Stan?"

The camera changed to a more stable view of a man inside of an ambulance.

"The doctors are getting worried about the teenager laying in that stretcher over there. As you can see behind me, Greta, the medics are rushing around and providing treatment to him, but, according to the chief medic, they don't have the sufficient supplies to treat the shrapnel wounds. We will see more when we get to the hospital. Back to you, Greta."

Greta smiled towards the camera with her microphone in hand. "For now, there is no more new from the police, but we are landing a few blocks away so we can get a closer look at the scene. We will be back to you after the break."

A commercial for a waterproof tape began to play as the watchers of the news program began to groan. For once, there was actually news in Medford, so they were extremely interested. But now they had to wait for five minutes to get any more news. The ones who had to go back to their jobs immediately went to their phones and subscribed to the news again, hoping to see what would happen to the teenager.

However, as of then, nobody could identify him, except for one family.

--

Bill sighed and got up from the couch, shambling towards the kitchen to get a cup of coffee. "Did we get the call yet from the Oswald Asylum? I am dying to know if Crystal's escapade with the rapist got her anywhere."

"I was just talking to them, brother," WIll answered him. "Oswald Asylum has her and claims that she has anti-social personality disorder."

"Like we didn't already know that," Bill said ruefully, inserting the beans into the coffee maker. "Did they discover her schizophrenia as well?"

"No, since she didn't plan to confide in them about that, I don't believe that they know," Will replied. His footsteps could be heard from Bill's location, telling Bill that Will was heading towards the stairs.

"Of course she's keeping it safe," Bill muttered to himself. "Anything else that they said?" he called up to his partner in crime.

"J-just that they were keeping her in the hospital and that we would have to tell them a week's in advance if we were going to visit her. Th-that's all." Will's footsteps were heading down the stairs.

"They didn't talk about price or anything, even though we were her only contacts? Interesting," Bill mumbled.

"Well, she was required to talk to them about her foster parents as well, so they are probably going to handle the pricing," Will said. He appeared in the doorway to the kitchen. "We did warn them about that, though, so I don't think they're surprised."

"What about Gureru? How is she handling the fact that her foster daughter just killed someone?" Bill asked Will. "Or did you not get a call from her yet?"

"Actually, Grell is male today," Will responded. "And yes, I did get a call from him. He didn't care; remember, Grell is Jack the Ripper and he did kill eight people before he died in the 1600's."

"You don't need to remind me," Bill said. "I was wondering about how he was going to react finding out that his child killed someone."

"He was diagnosed with sociopathy when he was fifteen," Will reminded his brother. "I doubt that he cares."

Bill gave Will a withering look as he turned on the coffee machine. "You don't have to be like that."

"I am your brother. Of c-course I have to," Will said, letting a little stutter seep into his words.

Bill sighed and turned back around, retrieving his mug from the coffee maker. He sipped his coffee and walked back to the living room while the last commercial played--something about spaghetti.

"I'm going to watch this. Stay out of my way."Will nodded and retreated back up into his room. Will did hope that the teenager was going to go to the Oswald Asylum. Judging from the head wound, the kid was going to suffer from some type of amnesia. Therefore, to Will, he was going to end up in the nearest asylum to get better.

Will didn't want Crystal to kill a person for nothing.