Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

There was a vague memory that would occasionally reappear in Amelia’s dreams when she least expected it from her childhood, more specifically a single moment that she felt was important somehow.

She had been sitting outside on a bench waiting for her Uncle to come and pick her up after school one day, when she overheard some kind of commotion going on nearby.

Taking a quick look around the playground, Amelia noticed a group of boys she recognized that were always getting into trouble standing in a circle around someone, obscuring them from view. They all had ugly looks on their faces that Amelia’s Uncle had warned her about avoiding, which only piqued her interests.

After a quick glance to make sure her Uncle’s car hadn’t arrived while she was distracted, Amelia left her bag on the bench and wandered over to see what was going on. She could feel something unpleasant forming in her gut at the sight of the older boys, but didn’t let it deter her.

She overheard the group of boys long before she got close enough to see who they were surrounding “—my Mom says you people should just go back to your country!”

For some reason this made Amelia’s blood boil, but she tried to remain calm as she continued approaching the group, trying hard not to fly off the handle and attack the group of boys.

“Yeah, go back to your country and take your ugly art with you!” Another boy jeered at their victim, holding up a sketchbook with weird-looking symbols written on the cover that Amelia didn’t understand.

She completely lost her cool when she realized the boys were surrounding a girl who looked to be around Amelia’s age. The girl with — colored hair was cowering under their looks and jeers with teary eyes.

This was the catalyst for Amelia to completely lose it, and before her brain could even catch up with what she was doing, Amelia had tackled the boy holding the sketchbook to the ground and was glaring at the others.

“What do you want, shrimp?” The boy who appeared to be the leader of the group asked threateningly. “You going to try and defend this—”

Whatever the boy was going to say was cut off as Amelia socked him right in the mouth, proving that just because he was bigger and older didn’t mean she wasn’t a threat.

Unfortunately the boys still outnumbered her and Amelia quickly found herself dogpiled by the group as they took turns punching and kicking her. Not to say that she didn’t give as well as she received, biting one boy’s ankle when he tried to kick her, and managing to break another’s nose when he leaned in to taunt her.

By the time a teacher finally noticed the roughhousing and managed to break the group up, Amelia had a black eye and a broken nose in addition to bruising and bleeding. The five kids were escorted into the school to get treatment by the nurse, and a visit to the principal’s office to talk about punishments.

The group of boys tried to lay all the blame on Amelia for attacking them out of nowhere, but the girl’s Uncle was able to stand up for his niece by saying that she would never do something like that without good reason.

It ended up becoming a shouting match between the boy’s parents, Amelia’s Uncle, and the Principal when they arrived to find their babies injured, while the kids sat there making faces at each other.

Taking a brief glance out the office door allowed Amelia to notice the girl she had helped standing there holding her sketchbook close to her chest looking shy, but with a smile on her face despite her tears.

Trying to show the other girl that she was okay, Amelia gave her a bright toothy smile and a V sign like she’d seen heroes do on TV, and felt a warm fluttering in her chest when the girl with pretty — hair smiled back at her.

Unfortunately she never learned the girl’s name, by the time she got back to school from her suspension there was no one with that unique shade of hair attending, and no one who she asked seemed to know anything about her or where she went.

Ame released a loud groan and rested her head down on the library table after spending the last half-hour furiously studying for an upcoming test she was worried about acing.

Of course her traitorous brain noticed the sunlight streaming in from the nearby window, cruelly tempting her with warmth and the smell of the great outdoors when she was supposed to be locked in on studying.

Just as she lifted her head and prepared to get back to the inevitable grind, only hoping her brain would be able to survive, Ame’s soul almost escaped from her body when a heavy stack of books was slammed down on the table mere inches from her studying material.

The obvious culprit was one of her best friends, who thought it would be hilarious to try and scare the blonde half to death.

Ouro Kronii had a bright grin on her face as she looked down at the much shorter girl she’d just startled. Her hand was placed at the top of a stack of textbooks covering different subjects with no obvious pattern, and Ame was half convinced that Kronii had chosen them at random based on how thick they were.

The pair’s other friend Mori Calliope thankfully didn’t take part in Kronii’s ill-advised prank, taking the seat across from Ame at the table and casually leaning the chair back onto two legs as she quirked an eye at the pile of textbooks Ame had collected to help her study.

“Hitting the books a bit hard today Watson?” Calli asked her friend sarcastically, both girls having learned that Amelia was usually the kind of person to take things as they came along, not bury herself in textbooks in the library.

“No matter how much you study, you aren’t going to be able to beat me on the upcoming test,” Kronii crowed out smugly as she took the seat beside Amelia, reminding the blonde of a smug peacock.

Opening her mouth intending to rebuke Kronii for her cheek, Ame instead let out an adorable and mortifying ‘hic’ caused by being startled by the blue-haired girl. Her face immediately began to burn red as Kronii broke into uproarious laughter.

“Oh my god that’s adorable Watson, you started hiccuping just cause I gave you a little scare?” Kronii tried to wheeze out through her laughter, barely able to breathe through her loud guffaws.

She pointedly missed Calli when the pink-haired girl noticed something over Kronii’s shoulder, and her attempts to warn her friend “Uh Kronii—”

Everything in the room became deathly silent when Kronii felt a pair of firm hands clamp down securely on her shoulders, immediately cutting off the blue-haired girl’s laughter while Ame and Calli looked on in shared horror.

“Ms. Ouro, Ms. Watson, Ms. Mori, need I remind the three of you about the rule of being quiet in the library, again?” A gruff yet still feminine voice asked the trio. None of them were able to find their voices to answer the terrifying library assistant.

“—Thanks for getting me kicked out of the library Kronii,” Amelia grumbled as the trio walked home together, the blonde’s backpack stuffed with as many textbooks as she could shove inside it before they fled from the library.

“Well excuse me that the LA doesn’t have a sense of humour,” Kronii tried to counter weakly. This did nothing to cool Ame’s temper, and the much shorter blonde glared up at her friend.

“Take it easy my bros, if you need help studying we’d be more than happy to give ya a hand Watson,” Calli tried waving an olive branch for her two friends. She reached out to rest her arms over the pair's shoulders and pulled them in close for a loose hug, with an easygoing smile on her face.

“You mean when you’re not too busy making googly eyes at the head cheerleader, right Calli?” Kronii shot back with a sly grin. She only winced briefly when Calli smacked the blue-haired girl in the back of the head for the cheek, the pink-haired girl’s own cheeks dusted a light pink at the jab.

“Hey I can focus for more than a minute on something other than—” Calli began trying to defend herself, but trailed off when the trio overheard shouting nearby.

The three shared an uncertain look momentarily before Ame was the first to take off in the direction of the noise, with Kronii hot on her heels moments later. Calli was only able to sigh in annoyance before she followed her two idiot friends.

Amelia took barely a moment to survey the situation before jumping into action, seeing a group of five guys standing over a girl kneeling on the sidewalk that looked vaguely familiar. The guys were sneering and one was holding a thick tome above his head, but the girl didn’t look like she was trying hard to get it back.

Immediately identifying the leader as the biggest threat, Amelia used what she had on hand as an impromptu weapon, and without slowing her run used her momentum to swing her backpack into the guy's face, knocking him to the ground.

The other guys were too stunned by the blonde’s appearance and take-down of their boss to react immediately, giving Ame a chance to take a second look at the victim.

“Oh, hey Shiori. Are these guys bothering you?” Ame greeted her friend like she hadn’t just assaulted some random guy and was likely about to be jumped by his friends.

Looking up at her senior with her somewhat unnerving glowing yellow eyes, Shiori gave the blonde a bright grin as she explained the situation “they thought it’d be funny to steal one of my manuscripts and make me pay to get it back.”

The pair would have continued chatting if the leader of the boys hadn’t gotten back to his feet on unsteady legs and wiped the blood from his likely broken nose. “You have a lot of nerve jumping into someone’s business, blondie.”

Amelia held her backpack with one hand, ready to use it as a weapon again if these guys decided to charge her “it’s my business if a bunch of assholes decide to harass someone from my school.”

“Well aren’t you confident when it’s five-on-one,” The leader sneered as he and his boys got into position to attack.

“You must be a real meathead if you think she’s alone,” Kronii commented as she marched up to Amelia’s side, having dropped her bag a few feet away and already rolling up her shirt sleeves.

“Picked a real bad day to be messing with my boys,” Calli added as she stopped at Ame’s other side. She pink-haired girl’s short-sleeved shirt allowed the boys to see all the tattoos covering her arms, including a skull and scythe design that had basically become her calling card.

Shiori had taken the chance during the stand-off to grab her manuscript and get out of the line of fire, eyes glowing in excitement at the chance to see three of the school’s delinquents in a fight.

“You’re an idiot,” Ceres Fauna scolded her girlfriend for the umpteenth time as she gently dabbed at Kronii’s injuries with a cotton swab. The green-haired girl’s frown made the much taller and stronger girl wilt like a flower, much to Ame and Calli’s amusement.

Neither were able to laugh at Kronii for long when their own caregivers decided to forcibly remind them they were in the same boat, roughly pressing the disinfectant-soaked cotton swab against their injuries.

Somehow Mumei managed to look completely disinterested while she sadistically pressed the swab into one of Amelia’s bigger wounds, adding with a blank look on her face, “you should invite me next time you pick a fight.”

“Mumei no!” Fauna tried to scold the brunette at the same time one of their other friends chimed in.

“Ooh me too, I’d love to cause a little Chaos!” Hakos Baelz agreed far too eagerly, and was rewarded with a smack upside the head from her unamused girlfriend.

“Need I remind you that you promised you’d stop getting into so many fights when we started dating Bae,” Irys told her girlfriend in a catty tone that Bae managed to completely misunderstand.

“But if my bro are going to get into a fight, I have to be there to back em up babe!” Bae whined to her girlfriend, “it’s like the bro code!”

Bringing a hand up to rub her forehead, Irys tried to talk sense to the red-haired girl “once again, you are all girls, not bros!”

Watching the ongoing drama between the chaotic couple with a grin on her face, Amelia fake gagged at the sight of the pair, “I hope I’m not that disgusting to watch when I’m in a relationship.”

“I’m sure you’ll be a hundred times—ouch! Fauna, be more careful!” Kronii tried to tease the blonde, but was cut off with a cry of pain when her girlfriend jabbed at one of her injuries. The green-haired girl pointedly refused to meet Kronii’s eyes when she tried to glare at her.

“Besides these idiot cousins attempting to harass each other—”

“Hey!” Said idiots tried to interrupt, but were promptly ignored.

“—I heard we’re supposed to be getting a transfer student soon,” Mumei explained to her group of friends, gaining everyone’s attention.

“Where’d you hear that from Mooms?” Bae asked, sitting cross-legged on Kronii’s bed next to her girlfriend.

A moment passed over the room as they waited for Mumei to answer Bae’s question, ignoring Kronii hissing in discomfort as Fauna dabbed at another injury.

“I forgot,” Mumei finally answered to no one’s surprise, earning annoyed sighs from her friends.

“Are you sure you shouldn’t talk to someone about your memory problems, Mumei?” Irys tried to ask, taking her attention briefly away from treating Calli’s wounds.

“It’s only my short-term memory, and the doctors say it’s fi—ine.” Mumei drew out the word with a smile, managing to ease her friend’s concerns.

“Oh a completely unrelated note, have you guys noticed that girl that’s always shadowing Nerissa and acts like none of us can see her?” Amelia tried to change the topic, leaning forward in the chair she was sitting on. She was immediately chastised for it by Mumei placing her hand on the blonde’s stomach and pushing her back.

“I believe her family name is Bloodflame,” Fauna supplied idly as she finished her treatment and closed the bottle of disinfectant, placing it on Kronii’s desk for now.

“Wait, aren’t they one of the rich families in the city?” Calli pointed out.

“Yeah, but so are the Ravencroft family,” Bae countered.

“Ooh, maybe it’s a star-crossed lovers situation!” Irys decided to propose with stars sparkling in her eyes at the possible chance for matchmaking. “We could play cupid and try to get them together.”

Ame idly rolled her eyes as she partially listened to Irys go off on one of her matchmaking rants, letting her eyes wander over to the window while her mind drifted away to foggy memories of a cute girl she’d only met once.

Chapter Text

Takanashi Kiara’s mind was elsewhere as she sat on the bleachers, only partially listening to the sound of the track team as they practised for an upcoming track meet. 

Her best friend was probably going to chew her out for not paying attention once they were finished, but Gura was about the least threatening person in the school, and Kiara had known her long enough to have learned that she was all bark and no bite, so she was ready to weather her complaints with a smile.

The source of the ginger’s distraction was a small group of girls sitting around a tree on the other side of the schoolyard, far enough away that she wasn’t able to tell what they were talking about.

Mori Calliope cut a pretty dashing figure from a distance, even wearing the school’s lame uniform. She looked like the kind of girl that could easily lift you up like a princess and carry you to the nurses office, like in some of the manga that Kiara read.

Unfortunately the rumours that floated around the school of that group of girls picking fights with people from other schools tended to scare off a lot of their admirers, though that hardly seemed to bother Calliope and her friends.

Currently the trio of Mori, Ouro, and Watson were chatting with a group of younger students that Kiara vaguely recognized as known troublemakers, but had also heard were sometimes targeted by bullies from other schools as ‘easy targets.’

Ouro must have said something to offend her, since the shorter of the blonde-haired twin sisters started futilely beating on the blue-haired girl’s arm while she laughed. The rest of the girls were also laughing about it, so it must not have been overly offensive.

As someone who’d been bullied when she was younger for being a foreigner and her shaky understanding of the English language at the time, Kiara couldn’t ignore the rumours of that group of girls standing up to people who thought it’d be funny to bully others for the way they talked, how they looked, or where they came from.

It was one of the reasons she had developed such a massive crush on Calliope, much to her best friends amusement and endless teasing. She was easily able to ignore Gura’s teasing, and shoot back with jokes about her height, and how terrible her test scores for Math were.

Speaking of the short terror, Kiara noticed the blue-haired girl charging up the bleachers towards her with a bright smile on her face holding a water bottle in one hand, and a towel in the other.

“Wawa, did you see me out there, I’m sure that I beat my last record that time!” Gura wasted no time bragging to her best friend once she stood in front of the other girl. Kiara could imagine a puppy tail wagging in excitement behind her as she bragged about her latest laps.

“That’s great Gura, I’m sure that the track team’s ace sprinter is in top form for the upcoming meet,” Kiara replied absently, trying to pretend she had been paying attention to her best friend.

Surprisingly it seemed like Gura had bought the half-hearted lie hook, line, and sinker as she puffed up her chest in pride, “You bet your pretty behind Wawa, I’m going to clean up at the track meet!”

Sensing a chance to tease her best friend, Kiara leaned forward in her seat and put on a coy smile, “oh, you think my behind is pretty Gura? Why I never knew you felt that way about your best friend.”

Unfortunately the joke fell flat since the pair had known each other far too long for Gura to fall for Kiara’s fake flirting, “of course you’re pretty Kiara, you could have the pick of anyone in the school if you set your mind to it.”

Gura finally seemed to notice where Kiara’s eyes kept darting while they spoke, and offered an annoyed grunt at the sight of the troublemakers, “oh, those three again.”

Kiara knew that Gura didn’t really dislike the group, she was just wary of them because of their reputation and maybe because her best friend had a little, tiny, absolutely massive crush on the pink-haired girl.

“They can’t be all bad when they spend so much time around that group of younger kids,” Kiara tried to reason with her best friend with a smile. Gura didn’t appear convinced as she kept frowning at the group.

Ouro now had the shorter pink twin in a loose headlock and was giving her a noogie while the rest of the group laughed at their antics. It looked quite lively and Kiara might have tried approaching if she wasn’t too utterly terrified of talking to Mori.

“Y’know I’ve been hearing girls making rude comments about Kronii being in a relationship with that girl from the gardening club in some of my classes,” Gura complained as she took a seat beside Kiara and began wiping her sweat and rehydrating.

The comment caused Kiara to turn back to her best friend, suddenly looking sick. “You don’t think they’re getting openly bullied for being in a relationship with each other, do you?”

Gura released a loud haw that caught the attention of some of the other track members, earning a glare from them. She pointedly ignored them as she answered her best friend, “even if they were, I doubt that group would let it go on for long. They definitely wouldn’t put up with that kind of crap.”

Kiara silently agreed as she took another glance over at the group of girls, especially a certain pink-haired girl.

The pair were standing at Kiara’s locker after school, just getting the last of the things she needed for the weekend, when the school intercom crackled to life.

“Kiara Takanashi to the Guidance Counselor’s office. Repeat, Kiara Takanashi to the Guidance Counselor’s office.”

“What’d you do this time?” Gura teased with a raised eyebrow at her best friend. Kiara tactfully ignored her best friend and closed her locker after making sure she had everything.

“Are you going to wait for me to finish with the Guidance Counselor?” Kiara asked rhetorically, already sure what the answer was going to be.

“I’m sure I can find a way to keep myself entertained while you get grilled by the school shrink,” Gura replied with a toothy smile, waving her phone around.

The Guidance Counselor’s office wasn’t far from Kiara’s locker, and Gura made herself at home on the floor sitting cross-legged with her phone in hand, idly reminding Kiara of a dog waiting for its master’s return. She chose not to make the comparison, since Gura would probably hit her for it.

The actual counselor was a no-nonsense woman named Ms. Alpha, who most students agreed was a bit intimidating. She was fairly young to be a certified Psychologist, and had a calm tone.

Kiara had a pretty good relationship with Ms. Alpha despite only talking to her every couple of months for status updates on how she was doing.

Strolling into the woman’s office confidently, Kiara gave her a bright smile, “Hello Ms. Alpha, what did you need me for?”

The adult was at her desk busy typing away at her computer when Kiara came in, but her attention immediately turned to the orange-haired girl when she noticed her arrival, “good, I was worried that you might have already left the school when they made the announcement.”

“As you might have heard, a transfer student is going to be arriving at the school on Monday, and I’d like you to show her around and teach her where everything is,” Ms. Alpha explained succinctly. It was often one of the things that intimidated students, but Kiara found it rather refreshing.

A bright smile grew on Kiara’s face at the explanation, and she could feel excitement bubbling up in her chest. “Is there anything I need to know about her Ms. Alpha?”

The woman turned back to her computer briefly, beginning to read off of the file that was probably pulled up on it, “she’s a foreigner like you, but her English is exceptional, so there should be no communication trouble.

“If you do happen to see or overhear her suffering from any bullying, please immediately inform a member of the faculty,” Ms. Alpha reminded Kiara of the anti-bullying procedures which some students chose to ignore.

“Don’t worry for a second Ms. Alpha, Gura and I will make sure that she feels welcome,” Kiara reported with a bright grin that helped to somewhat ease the severe look on the woman’s face.

“I knew that recommending you for this job was a good idea Ms. Takanashi, and I’m sure that you’ll do a good job,” Ms. Alpha stated with a nod.

Extra: Advent antics

Four of the five members of the group of friends who’d nicknamed themselves ‘Advent’ were busy watching their fifth member make a nuisance of herself in front of a member of the student council.

“Think she’s going to strike out again?” Shiori Novella idly asked as she split her attention between proofreading her latest manuscript, and watching her best friend try to hit on her longtime crush.

“I think it’d be funny if she did,” the shortest member of the group chimed in as she drank her carton of strawberry milk through a straw. Koseki Bijou was well known as a gremlin who teased anyone and everyone equally.

“Hoeh? Aren’t we supposed to support Wissa’s romance?” The second-shortest girl countered Bijou’s comment. Mococo Abyssgard was a short-tempered, short statured little monster who was also fiercely protective of her younger sister and friends.

“Maybe if they get together we can finally stop feuding with Justice,” The soft-spoken Fuwawa Abyssgard suggested with a smile. She was often the one who had to rein in her older sister’s temper, even though she was just as mischievous as her friends.

“Fat chance of that when Liz seems to think all we ever do is break school rules,” Shiori grumbled. She might have had a slight grudge against the red-haired girl and her own group of friends for constantly chastising Advent for the slightest infraction.

“It’s so unfair since Ame, Calli and Kronii get into a who—ole lot worse stuff than we do,” Biboo pointed out to her friends. They all nodded in agreement with the girl’s point.

“Maybe she’s always after us because she wants to see Wissa more often?” Fuwawa suggested with a bright smile. She was trying to look at things optimistically, and maybe a bit romantically.

“You need to stop borrowing Mumei and Wissa’s romance novels, Fuwa-chan,” Mococo complained to her little sister. This immediately caught Fuwawa’s attention, and she tried to glare at her sister.

This ultimately devolved into the Abyssgard sisters wrestling with each other on the ground, Fuwawa crying “take it back Mogo-jyan,” while Mococo whined “stop hitting me Fuwa-chan!”

Biboo was too busy laughing at the twins fighting with her squeaky, windshield wiper-like laugh to see the end of Nerissa’s latest confession, or notice the tallest member of their group taking a seat beside her with a sigh.

“Struck out again Rissa?” Shiori asked rhetorically since it was fairly obvious from the look on the dark-haired girl’s face.

Even though she’d just been turned down again, Nerissa Ravencroft still had a goofy, lovestruck smile on her face as she thought about the girl of her dreams, “I’m sure that I’ll be able to convince her next time.”

Shiori made no attempt to hide her grin at the antics of her best friends, listening to the comforting background noise of the group as she worked on her manuscript.