Summary: My take on how Matt and Mello First met, I always thought Mello was kind of a juvenile delinquent bully type.
His name was Mihael, not Michael, and the blond would quickly correct anyone who pronounced it the English way, saying "It's Mee-ha-ell not My-cull."
He wasn't English, not that his accent gave this away. He'd come to Wammy's House at the age of nine, transferred from a juvenile facility for delinquent minors in Ljubljana, and had learned to speak well enough to pass for native. However, he still insisted people pronounce his name right. Not that many people called him by his first name anyway. Shortly after coming here he'd picked up the nick name Mello. It had started from a taunt.
It was his first day at the school, recess. He was sitting alone, glowering, taking in his strange surroundings. It was so different than any life he'd ever known. The blond boy wasn't playing or interacting with the other kids, it was all a bit overwhelming for him and his English wasn't that good yet. Mihael would have been perfectly content to stay sitting under the tree thinking over how he had come to be here, and wondering what his new life would be like. He didn't want to start trouble or a fight, but if a fight came to him he'd finish it. Which was exactly what happened when one of the older boys at the school, a bespeckled fifth grader who was a head taller than Mihael and from the looks of him about 100 lbs heavier, had decided to mess with him.
He came tromping up, followed by three other guys who stood beside him like body guards. "Hey kid," he said his tone that was not at all friendly. Mihael ignored him, unsure of what to say in this foreign tongue. "What you don't talk? I thought this was a school for geniuses not retards. So you're the new boy? Aren't you a little scrawny for a nine year old, you look like a girl, a pretty baby girl, and that hair little mello yellow." The last bit was in a sing song voice.
He hadn't gotten the full gist of what the bigger boy had said, but he could tell when he was being mocked. Mihael gave him a bloody nose then and there. The boy cried out in pain, then just stood there stunned at the blond's audacity. No one at the school would have dared to do something like that. The boy he hit, Rodney, was the worst bully in the place, everyone was scared of him. He couldn't believe this skinny little blond twerp had dared to hit him, and pretty hard at that. Of course the two other boys moved to make Mihael pay for that, but their leader held up his hand to stop them.
"Watch it boys, this kid's pretty tough," he actually smiled as he wiped the blood from his nose. It had hurt, but his nose wasn't broken, no real harm done. He was impressed by this kid. "Mello Yellow here's got some guts, I like him. Hey how's about you join my gang kid?"
By the time two years had gone by Mello was the undisputed leader of the 'gang' of bullies, and without a doubt the toughest kid in the school. The nickname had stuck, and he liked it well enough. Most kids thought it was ironic because Mello could be was anything but calm sometimes.
He had a temper, an attitude, a mean streak, and could be pretty ruthless. Even if older high school aged kids tried to mess with him he could hold his own in a fight. He'd come from a rough back ground.
He had no idea who his father was or if he ever had one around. As for his mom, she had died when he was pretty young, he didn't remember her much. He remembered that she was pretty, that she always smelled of lavender, and gave him chocolate sometimes. They couldn't afford things like candy much, so when he got chocolate it was always treated as something very special. She had died in a fire, he had been with her, they'd rescued him from the ruins, she'd saved her son by covering him with her own body while she burned. He didn't remember what happened though, he had been so young.
After his mother died he'd been placed in Catholic Orphanage run by Franciscan nuns, there he stayed until he was about seven years old, when he ran away. After that he'd lived on the streets for a while, fallen into a gang and held his own. However, even the toughest kid can't win a fight against two police officers.
The juvenile facility had its own school for the kids there. They didn't know what grade to place him in though. All Mihael could tell them was that he had been to school, but he wasn't sure for how long, he just shrugged, and said he could read and write. So they gave him an aptitude test to place him. The results had been outstanding, or so the teacher had explained, so outstanding in fact that Mihael found himself having to do a host of other tests. Some were normal, reading, writing, math, others had to do with mazes, puzzles, and what shapes you saw when looking at blobs of ink on flash cards. It was tedious, but the teacher gave him chocolate as a reward for working hard and doing well on the tests, which made Mello happy, not only because of the candy itself, but because it was recognition that he had done well.
The teacher was a man by the name of Luka Sklavko. As a younger man he had studied in England where he made the acquaintance of a man named Quillsh Wammy. Quill had similar ideals as Luka, they both believed that helping children was the key to a better future. Luka had chosen to return to his home country and work with at risk youth, hoping that as a teacher he could change the path they were going down in life. Quill had used his family's large fortune to found a orphanage for gifted youth.
When Luka Sklavko came across the young Mihael Keehl he was amazed to find a student with so much potential. The boy was a genius; his IQ was well over 140. Luka had contacted his old college friend right away. This boy had nowhere to go, and it would be a shame for a boy like this to end up a common street thug. A good environment, the right attention, that's all he needed.
So a few months later Mihael was transferred to the school in England. By the time his sentence was served, it wasn't that harsh of a sentence only four months, all the necessary paperwork had been taken care of. Legal guardian ship had been granted to Mr. Wammy, and he was to stay in that school until he became an adult. He was very lucky, or so his teacher had said. He actually thought so too. After the intelligence tests had been done, for the first time in his life he felt like he was worth something. The teacher had treated him like he mattered, like he was special, the better he did on things, the more attention he got. He liked it, and liked the feeling of being better than everyone else.
At The Wammy's House he had continued to excel, striving always to be the best. It made him feel good about himself. His whole life before this, he had been nothing, now, for the first time, he mattered, as long as he was the best. Always it was a matter of proving himself, that he was good enough, that he was worth something after a life time of feeling pretty worthless.
His hard work paid off in so far as he was never kicked out of the school despite being a trouble maker. So by the age of twelve, Mello felt pretty much on top of the world. He was the smartest kid in school (well there was the little pale kid, but he was nothing; Mello was smarter, he'd beat him), and the toughest. But he really didn't have any friends, he had lackeys.
That is until he came along.
His name was Mail Jeevas.
