"Come on, Sora!" Kairi shouted, shaking his shoulders roughly as he continued to snooze at his desk. "Class is over! It's time to go home!"

Sora was face down on his desk, his arms hiding his face and his wildly spiked light brown hair drooped downward. Kairi, the maroon-haired girl standing over him, placed her hands on her hips and sighed in frustration. Looking around her, there were only a few other students left in the class as it had ended five minutes ago. She lifted her right arm and glanced at her wrist watch. Riku was surely out of his class by now.

"Is he asleep again?"

Kairi looked up and saw a familiar silver-haired teen standing in the door to the classroom. She smiled ruefully. "Speak of the devil," she brushed off the front of her blue uniform skirt. "I'm glad to see you, Riku. Sora's knocked out and we've got to drop some stuff off at the library."

Riku, the teen in question, shrugged his shoulders and held up the massive science book in his left hand. He hovered over Sora's desk, listening for a moment to hear the boy's loud snoring. With a sigh, Riku dropped the textbook with a thud on the free space on Sora's desk, causing the boy to fly out of his seat and shout.

"Hey!" Sora shouted, his face red from embarrassment. "What was that for?"

Kairi laughed while Sora collected himself. "You fell asleep at the end of Professor Aerith's lecture again. You wouldn't wake up so Riku had to…surprise you."

The spiky haired youth finally calmed down and found himself chuckling too. "Okay okay I get it."

"Now are we ready to go?" Riku asked the pair, grabbing his book and tucking it into his backpack. "The library is closing early today so the drama club can get ready for the festival."

Kairi grabbed her tote while Sora stuffed his pencils, pens and journals into his backpack. "Oh man! I almost forgot about the festival!"

Sora threw his backpack over one shoulder and grinned. "Jeez, Kairi, some class rep you turned out to be! You're supposed to know all this stuff!"

The redhead led the way and opened the sliding door. "I've been swamped with schoolwork and planning," she admitted. "Selphie has been helping me out a lot even though she's super involved with the dance class but it seems like I don't have enough hands."

All the students at Destiny High Academy were busy preparing for the yearly Festival of Light, a celebration of youth and the folk tales surrounding the Destiny Islands. Every year the students at Destiny High Academy would put on a huge festival with booths, plays, performances, art walks, games and other activities centered around the various legends of the island. This year was the one-hundred fiftieth anniversary of the festival so the students took care to make sure that it was the biggest celebration yet.

Kairi shifted her books in her arms, the ones she needed to return sitting on top of the pile. Sora looked over her shoulder and read the titles.

"Are those the ones you used to do research on our classes project?" He asked curiously.

She nodded enthusiastically. "Yup! I found as many books as I could about the legends of spell casters. There's even a few stories about the magic of the paopu fruit."

Riku snickered behind the pair and elbowed Sora in his ribs. "Well would you look at that! Maybe Sora can take a few hints from that story and give a piece to a certain someone."

Sora's face exploded red and he threw his backpack at Riku's head, almost hitting him if it weren't for Riku being quick on his feet and ducking. "Shut up, Riku!"

Kairi dismissed the two boys and laughed heartily, spotting the library up ahead. She quickened her pace once she spotted a familiar instructor standing at the doorway, waving for that person to keep it open.

Kairi skidded to a stop when she came to the front desk, her breathing heavy. She gave a slight bow and smiled at the young woman standing at the desk with her long brown hair tied into a neat braid with glasses hanging on the bridge of her nose, her bright green eyes shining. "Hi, Professor Aerith! I came to return the books you told me to look at on the island legends."

The young instructor of class 2 – B smiled when she recognized one of her students. She held out her hand and took the books from her student. "Did you enjoy them?"

She nodded fervently as Riku and Sora caught up to her. "I did! I think our class has enough stuff now to use to finish off our assignment for the festival."

Just then a woman who was short in stature with long dark brown hair and wine colored eyes with fair skin approached the group, smiling. "It seems like everyone is getting excited for the festival. I think this year will be the best one yet."

The trio of students bowed before the woman with Riku being the first to do so seeing as she was both his homeroom teacher and history teacher.

"Hi, Ms. Lockhart!" Sora greeted cheerfully.

"Hello, Sora," she replied with a small smile. "Are all of you getting ready for the festival?"

Kairi nodded. "You bet! Our class is almost done with our project. I just wanted to do a little more research before we finished everything off."

Ms. Lockhart smiled in approval. "Aerith," she said to her colleague. "You've got a great group of kids this year."

Aerith agreed. "As do you, Tifa." She turned her attention to Riku. "Have you been actively working with your class, Riku? What was your assignment again?"

"Dark fairytales," Riku answered matter-of-factly.

Aerith placed a hand on Tifa's shoulder. "You would be the one to pick the scary stories," she joked. "Aren't you all doing the haunted house?"

"That's right," Tifa replied.

"I thought that the Festival of Light was supposed to be…" Sora trailed off as if he were deep in thought. "You know, happy and junk? We've never done any haunted houses save for this year."

Tifa nodded, pushing her long hair over one shoulder. "That is correct, Sora. Usually the festival is all about children, innocence and stories about magic. But what most people fail to realize is that there are a lot of dark legends that accompany the lighter ones. I thought that it would be a good idea if we changed it up a bit and talked about that aspect of the festival. Riku would know. Him and his classmates have been working on the haunted house and children's story booth for a couple of weeks now. He should be an expert at this."

The silver-haired teen smiled politely but shrugged his shoulders. "I wouldn't say that…"

Sora jumped in, saying, "Riku's not one for a bunch of fairytales or ghosts or anything like that. He's too logical for that kind of stuff."

Aerith grinned. "You don't believe in that kind of stuff, even a little?"

Riku stuffed his hands in the pockets of his uniform slacks. "To be honest not really. I mean, fairytales are cool when you're younger but I like to see my proof before I go off believing in something."

"You're so boring," Sora teased. "All you care about is school, blitzball and whatever girl you're talking to at the time. Lighten up!"

Riku fired back, "Oh yeah? Well you're almost seventeen and you still believe in Santa."

Aerith and Tifa laughed while Kairi face-palmed herself, unable to believe her best friends.

"You two are incredible," Kairi sighed.

When Aerith had silenced herself, she reached into her pocket and handed a slip of yellow paper to Kairi. The redhead looked up as if to ask "what is this?" and unfolded the paper, reading what appeared to be an address written down in her professor's elegant handwriting.

"In case you were wanting to do some more research," Aerith started, "even though you probably don't need to…" she set Kairi's books down on the front desk and asked for the student attendant to return the books for her, "…but there's a bookstore that just opened up in the shopping district. They carry a lot of books on urban legends and they even have a lot of trinkets and other cool stuff you might find for the festival. You guys might want to check it out."

Kairi and Sora's bright blue eyes lit up. "Thank you, Professor Aerith!" They said simultaneously.

"Not a problem," she replied. "Now Tifa and I have some festival business to discuss. We'll see you all bright and early tomorrow."

The three bid goodbye to their instructors and headed for the exit.

"Oh and Sora!" Aerith called, waving her hand.

The spiky-haired teen turned around. "Yeah?"

"And try not to fall asleep during lecture tomorrow," she told him, adding a gentle yet stern tone to her voice. "We'll be having a quiz on what we learned this week so you'd best stay awake."

Embarrassed royally for the second time today, Sora sheepishly apologized and promised to be alert for the next lecture, following after Riku and Kairi who had already left the library.

Once the trio were gone, Aerith turned her attention to Tifa. "They're good kids. We got a good batch this year, didn't we?"

Tifa agreed. "I'd say so. Good thing too. The festival this year is going to have a few surprises in store for them all other than the traditional carnival games and rides. Wouldn't you agree?"

Aerith shared an all-knowing smile with her associate and nodded her head. "I couldn't have said it better myself."

Author's Note: Hello all! I hope that you guys are having an amazing day. I've been hard at work for a while now on Sins and an Absolution (which is almost at its end). Fortunately, summer vacation is coming for me and so I figured I'd start early by releasing two new chapters of my brand new story.

I looked back on an old poll I did a while ago and realized "Crap, I don't have a fantasy story up" - which was/is one of my first loves next to horror. In addition to that, I need a side project next to Sins that is different enough to keep me on my toes with this stuff. Not that Sins is on a hiatus, it's just that I need to put my mind somewhere else. Believe it or not, writing something that modern and dark...well...it can be a bit hard on the mind, you know? Especially with what I have planned next.

So this is my other project. I won't tell you guys what to expect until the next chapter but I do hope that you all enjoy it. Please let me know what you guys think in a review!

Take care all!