A/N: Believe it or not, this came from a headcanon I put on tumblr a while ago – search up "Total Drama Little Headcanons". Someone else runs it, but if you scroll down, you'll see a tonne of TD headcanons. If you want to know which person started posting about Leharold becoming canon, that's me. But if you scroll down, you'll see others I posted. And one of them says that Alejandro wished he had a little sister for a long time. So...well, I decided this AU means I can give him one.

Plot: Melisa Burromuerto is the youngest child in her family and the only girl, which makes her rather quiet and subdued, having three older brothers who are brilliant, talented and charming. However, she's always had one person in her life who's always had her back – Alejandro, the second youngest, who despite being four years older has always looked out for her, and she in return hero-worships him. When he applies for a new Total Drama season, Melisa promises to be cheering him on, no matter what. But Total Drama World Tour starts airing long before its conclusion in order to make the finale live, and Melisa starts to realize that there's a lot she didn't know about her favourite brother...

Disclaimer: Melisa is the only thing I own. Everything else goes to Fresh TV.

Does your family have high expectations of you? Does your family love you and support you no matter what? And finally, do you sometimes feel like because they love you and support you, you have to always try your best to be the best at everything you do? If it was me, I would say "yes" to all three of those questions.

My big brother Jose always says that life should be a breeze for me because I'm the youngest and the only daughter, so I've always been Papa's little girl and he spoils me. Right. Even if that was true, which it's not, Mama nags me constantly about my hair (dark and usually in a ponytail), my clothes, and how much makeup I wear. She says I have a pretty face already and as long as I stick to my lifestyle, I'll stay pretty and won't need makeup until I'm her age. Next year, she says, she'll stop bothering me about it and let me wear what I want.

One thing no one has to ever nag me about is my schoolwork. My brothers always brought home straight As when they were kids and I've always been a hard worker. I've brought home a few A pluses which is something my brothers didn't do so much, and so it's generally accepted that I'm the smart one of the family. Carlos, the oldest, is considered the active one, because he got into the soccer majors almost the minute he left school and plays professionally for Canada now (which is where we've lived for a while – Carlos is twenty-one now, so we've lived here for almost three years).

Okay, okay, so if I've got the brains and Carlos got the brawn, who got the looks and the charm? Well, I personally think Jose got the looks. He always looked adorable when he was a little kid, and I heard that he has girls all over him now he's eighteen and at college. As his sister, I can't say if he's as gorgeous as everyone else says, but I can tell he is pretty good-looking. In a rugged sort of way.

As for the charm? Well, I could be a little biased, but I think every little bit of it went to Alejandro, my third big brother. He's sixteen and in high school, four years older than me. But I think I do have facts that he's got the charm. When I first started kindergarten, he was in fourth grade, and even then, I could see that everyone wanted to be his friend. It wasn't just the guys in his year, either – half the girls were the same. Something just made everyone like him. Even though we've moved half a dozen times since then – Papa's a diplomat, so our stay in Canada is actually our longest since forever) – every time we do, Alejandro is garaunteed about six new friends by the end of our first day at a new school. Of course, I'm only in junior high now because I'm twelve, and he's in high school, but I know that kind of thing.

Yeah, even though I'm still considered a child and Alejandro's practically an adult, we tell each other everything. It's always been that way, ever since I can remember. When I was really young, like in preschool, I barely saw anything of Carlos – he was in junior high himself then, and Jose was always with his friends, but by the time I was three or four, we were each other's best friend. Even now, when we're both older, Alejandro still tells me basically everything, and there's nothing he doesn't know about me. He sometimes jokes that I'm his only "real girlfriend" because our sibling relationship is way closer than any other could be - he's had a lot of actual girlfriends, but no one he's been serious about yet. I really look up to him, and I know for a fact that he would never give me any reason not to.

So I guess that gives you a picture of my loving, supportive family. Oh! Except me. I'm twelve, like I said, and my full name is Melisa Isabella Burromuerto. Jose sometimes calls me Mel, but I prefer my whole name. I can't stop him calling me that, though. I think it's just Jose's thing – he likes to tease. He calls Alejandro "Al" most of the time too, no matter how many times Alejandro asks him not to – he really can't stand the name. But while I think Jose just calls me Mel to tease, I think he's actually trying to annoy Alejandro. They've been major rivals for a long time, but because Jose's older, he's almost always better at everything.

We're from Spain originally, but we've lived all over the world, since Papa's job moved us around. We moved to Japan soon after I was born, so I grew up trilingual because I heard three languages – Spanish, English and Japanese. We've also been to several parts of South America, Australia for just a few months once, Hawaii, and after a six-month stay in Argentina just before I turned ten, we moved to Toronto, Canada, and there we've been since. Papa does most of his work with a representative now, and just writes points out for him, so that's why we haven't moved since.

It was a relief to stay put when I moved to middle school, because it meant we were all new kids and apart from kids I knew in elementary school from fifth grade, I didn't know anyone and it was easier to make friends. My brothers never had a problem with making friends – I already mentioned that just about everyone likes Alejandro straight off the bat, but Carlos and Jose never had any problems breaking into a new group either. I was the only one who took longer than a week to find a new group, probably because I was always a bit quieter than them. I never got picked on exactly. I've never been loud, but when I got teased, it didn't annoy me and the jokes were sometimes so lame (they had to look really hard for something to tease me about once they realized I actually kind of liked the "nerd" label) that they just made me laugh too, which wasn't exactly what the immature jokesters of the world were looking for from a target. It was just that everyone already had their own friends and I wasn't as outgoing as my brothers, so I didn't feel like I could just walk up to a group and ask them if I could join in with them. Eventually I'd get adopted by a group and they'd be my friends, but I never had a best friend until junior high.

That might have been one of the reasons Alejandro and I were so close. He had a lot of friends, but he used to tell me "They don't really know me. It's like there's three versions of me – the one they know, the one that's holding back, listening to that version and making plans about what to say next, and the real one."

I smiled a little when he said that. "And do I know the real one?" I asked.

"Melisa, if you didn't know the real me, you'd know by now." Alejandro said, smiling back at me. "You're my hermanita. I can't tell my friends this kind of thing."

I always thought I was really lucky to have a best friend in my family. A lot of the friends I'd had over the years had had older or younger siblings, and a lot of them had bullied or pestered them. I mean, yeah, Jose teased me and Carlos was so much older that he was more like a young uncle than a brother to me, but none of them had a best friend hermano, like I did.

That, I suppose, is why I never thought about those other two versions Alejandro talked about – the guy who everyone wanted to be friends with, and the one who was listening to that one and thinking up what that version would say next.

You see, Melisa knows a very different Alejandro to the one that the TV saw. The Alejandro she knows is more of a protector and confidant. She thinks Alejandro tells her everything, but there are sometimes a few things you don't tell little sisters...also, to clarify, there will be a little Spanish in some chapters. I will give translations at the end of each chapter. For today:

"Hermano" = Brother