"…Regardless of the warnings the future doesn't scare me at all…" 

:: Hikari :: Utada Hikaru ::

Chapter One: Santa Monica

I, Hitomi Kanzaki, from my many hours in TV land, know that every kid, no matter how morphine-hyped up happy their family is, has thought about doing this once or twice in their life.

Only a few of them actual get up the nerve to do it, though.

Even fewer of them get more then a few miles outside of town before the cops pick them up and drop them back off home to a happy reunion with their parents.

But after spending the last 3-months watching made-for cable TV movies about this highly temperamental subject while lounging around in my mother's spacious loft in NYC, I've perfected this art form in a sense that would make Claudia from The Mixed up files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler cry tears of joy.

You see, to the untrained mind, running away from home is simply something you do in the heat of the moment; storming out the front door with only your trusty Nike sneakers on your feet and your backpack full of PBJs.

Don't get me wrong; I did storm out the front door of my mother's highly fashionable loft that I've called 'home' for the past 3 years or so of my life, but I didn't stick out my thumb and hitchhike a ride to Canada or Tahiti with the first bum I saw.

I may have done some retarded things in my short life, but if living in New York City has taught me anything it's that a scenario like that would've ended up with me either lying dead in a ditch somewhere or sitting at the Police station waiting for my mother to pick me up after her latest photo shoot. Which of the two evils are the lesser, I don't know.

So I, being the intelligent 16-year-old daughter of a famous fashion model and a highly renowned lawyer that I am, did the next best thing after the classic running away plan.

I bought a one-way first class plane ticket to Santa Monica, California on my mother's Visa card.

Brilliant, huh?

The best part of the plan was that I wasn't running away from home.

I was running to it, as sappy as that sounds. 

But I guess I should start out with the reason I was running away from home.

It was my 16th on this little place we call Earth. It was also the 16th season of the soap opera I enjoy calling my life, starring Allen Schezar, my mother's latest boy toy.

You see, no matter how you look at it, Allen Schezar, was, and is, the bane of my existence, and, quite frankly the reason I was standing at JFK airport waiting for the 9:20 flight to California.

My life went spiraling downward when two weeks ago, when Allen Schezar, agent/ boyfriend to the lovely and talented model, Millerna Aston popped the question to her.  Allen Schezar dropped to one knee and proposed to her, Millerna Aston, AKA my divorcée mother.

I had almost choked on my cream-cheese covered bagel when I had heard. Allen?

Allen… he is, in one word… perfect.

With his spun gold hair and charming personality that made my mother's friends' knees go promptly into jell-o, my feelings towards him were nothing short of pure utter most disdain.

… I-I can't put my finger on it, but for some reason, but even with all the honey-sweet smiles and sugary compliments Allen made towards me, and my mother's pleas that I at lest made a effort to like him… I still couldn't trust him. There just was something… menacing… about him that made my hair stand on end whenever he touched me.

And then, as the say in the fast food industry; the onion rings just fell out of the deep fryer and into the fire.

Allen had placed into my mother's mind, by, what I strongly suspect was brain washing, the brilliant idea of moving our happy soon-to-be little family to Paris.

Paris as in Paris, France.

Yes, the one on the other side of the pond where everyone speaks French.

Needless to say, I'd rather swallow poison then spend the rest of my natural teenage life living with the happy lovebirds in Allen's family home. It was bad enough that I would be calling the pretty-boy 'daddy-dearest', but they didn't have to resort to cruel and unusual punishment. 

But, after a lengthy debate and my mother's promises that if I did swallow the poison, she'd bring me back from the dead, and still make me move to Paris, here I am, running to the only person in the entire world who could possibly talk my mother out of making me move with her and Allen-Poo to Paris.

And that person happened to be my father, Dryden Fassa, attorney at law.

You see, the Plan A  was that once I was over at my father's beach house in California, he'd have no choice but to help me find a loophole in the law that didn't allow mother's to drag their only child half-way across the world to live with her crazed fiancé.

And if there wasn't a loophole in the law, Plan B was that I'd duck tape myself to my four-poster bed and wait for my mother to come and collect me. You see then, in a clever ploy that was totally a last ditch effort, I was hoping at least there was a sliver of humanity left in Millerna so that she would she how much happier I was living with my father in California then living with her and blond-boy wonder in France. It was a long shot, but if push came to shove, I might just make it with the leverage help from a cute pair of shoes… knocking Mr. Shezar and his happy little French life out of the picture for me.

How my parents had even lasted as long together as they had has been a mystery to me. Millerna and my father had met while my dad was in law school, and had met at a classy restaurant that my dad ate at after classes where Millerna was working part time to make her way through modeling school.

Well, one thing led to another and… after visiting a local bar one night… well let's, just say hormones kicked in.

They got married shortly after they found out Millerna was pregnant with me.

But shortly after I was born things just… well, everything just went out the window… including their marriage.

Millerna gets all flustered whenever I ask her about it, so the subject doesn't come up very often.

Marlene, my aunt, told me that it had something to do with their jobs, that Dad wanted to move our happy little family out to California to where his law firm was, while Mom wanted to stay in New York because that's where she worked as a model.

Well that's what Marlene told me at least. I've personally always preferred the version of the story that involved the fact that my father happened to be a spy for the CIA. Since he was always away trying to stop a worldwide nuclear war from starting, their marriage just kind of fell apart.

Hey, it could've happened, right?

Anyway, after the divorce, I ended up growing up in my mother's loft in New York. I always had a strong feeling that the Aston good looks and charms had somehow swayed the judge into awarding her custody of me, but I never voiced that idea.

After that, Dryden used to visit me every month and we'd go to Central Park or some place like that, and play.

Once I got older, I then spent the summers at his beach house about 20 minutes outside of Santa Monica. Those summers where the only light in my dark world on endless photo shoots and my mother's whirlwind of boyfriends. Everything was just so much simpler living with my father then with Millerna. For the first time in my life, I was happy and felt loved.

Dryden… just… he never had to buy my affection like Millerna tried to with expensive gifts; he just loved me without question. That, not the closet full of trendy cloths and shoes, had always been enough for me. Growing up in a world of flashy lights and cheap thrill, the raw emotions of pure platonic love for me, was like breathing for the first time. Spending the summers with Dryden had been and probably will ever be the closest thing to happiness that I've ever been.

So, after my mother broke the news to me over dinner in a snazzy restaurant that we're moving with Allen-Poo to Paris, it became clear to me that the only thing between me and eating caviar and French bread for the rest of my natural life was Daddy Dryden.

Hence the plane ticket to Santa Monica in a last-ditch effort to live out my remaining teenage years in happiness.

"Now boarding Flight 468 to Santa Monica." The loudspeaker chirped happily.

Taking a deep breath, I slipped the strap of my duffel bag more securely over my shoulder before approaching the boarding entrance.

Cheers mate, to a new life.

A/N: *sniff*… My first AU… Beautiful stuff, huh? Decided to throw out the cookie cutter for this one, so I have no idea where this might go.

And, to any French readers, I have nothing against you, or your country, its just Allen struck me as a French kind of guy. No offense was meant to anyone by Hitomi's lack of wanting to move to France, savvy? And while on this note, I'm not suggesting that running away from home will solve any of your problems. In fact, unless you happen to have a parent that's as awesome as Dryden is to run to, I'm pretty sure that you'd be multiplying your problems by trying to make it on your own. Seriously, I'm like paying Hitomi to do it for the dramatic content.

Inspiration is from MaboroshiTsuki's Come Home To Me. Everyone go read it. Now. Or Else.

Mmmmmmmhmmmm… and if anyone has any ideas where this should go, please drop me some ideas, I think I might be over my head in this one. Waaay over my head in fact. So, show some support, eh? Drop me a review or three!

Disclaimer: I don't own Escaflowne or it's likeness. And as far I know, this idea hasn't been done before, so if I find anyone stealing, that means I reserve the right to inflict mass genocide upon the thief.

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