A few weeks after the last Skullgirl had been defeated, a surge of hearsay rippled through the ranks of Maplecrest High School, and it started with Filia Medici.
At first, no one had recognized her on the breezy Monday she returned. Her eyes were obscured by a ladies' bowler hat that matched the colors of her uniform. She walked shyly down the hallway, glancing between groups of her chatting peers. Just another girl who was hardly given a second thought as she headed to her first period.
Her classmates began to take note of the unfamiliar student when she, after speaking to Mrs. Victoria for a minute, sat at the desk in the first row that had remained empty for days and days. Some craned their necks to catch a glimpse of her face, others considered striking up a conversation.
Then she took off her hat.
Heads turned as a mess of long black hair tumbled over the teenager's shoulders. Her sleek blonde locks were now silky and thick with a batch of bangs swept over her forehead. Topping her head was the strangest headband, decorated with two large rows of sharp white protrusions.
Without the hat's brim shading her eyes, they could confirm her identity in seconds, even with her normally dark irises colored bright red. But over the next few hours, an even more startling change became apparent.
She was nicer.
It wasn't that Filia had been mean per say, but it hadn't been hard to tell she was from the most influential family in New Meridian sans the actual royalty. Her character was as snooty and privileged as you'd expect, and her peers were used to her only giving the time of day to her friends or people she wanted something from. If that was still her policy then everyone was her friend now.
She waved to people in the hallway. She made small talk with kids she'd never previously acknowledged. She offered to help people she saw struggling with heavy loads of books. There was a quiet running joke in some circles that she had hit her head while she was gone, though it quickly became a legitimate theory seeing as she sometimes muttered to herself and had a hard time remembering things. (Who forgets they speak a second language?)
While curiosity laced their gazes and conversations, hardly anyone pried for answers. Considering Medici Tower had fallen on the night of the Skullgirl's attack, they figured it was a complicated situation that she preferred to keep private. And the ones who didn't care about privacy were content with leaving this new Filia as a pleasant closed book.
But as the school's society adjusted to this development, things only got weirder.
First was Carol. Despite being generally regarded as "what's-her-face from math class", there had been buzz when she returned. A few months back, word spread that she hadn't been showing up to school, and even teachers and staff didn't know where she had disappeared to. There were whispers among students that she had been abducted or involved in some kind of accident, whispers that certainly weren't weakened by the x-shaped scar marking her face when she'd finally reappeared.
She - or rather Filia - explained she'd developed a rare condition that required surgeries and extensive rehabilitation at some special lab or hospital. Even though she was back living with her parents in Maplecrest, she still took days off to visit the facility to monitor her health. Some were skeptical of an illness that required what they could only assume to be open face surgery, but the way she winced in pain on the occasion she overexerted herself convinced them to leave it be.
(There was still the odd rumor about her though. An underclassman insisted he saw her in town getting ice cream with what he described as "a literal cartoon character".)
As expected, there were people who teased her for her new look, but what had nearly made her cry was her friends and other girls rushing up to her on the first day, asking fervently what had happened to her and if she was okay. In an odd twist, her predicament had made her more popular for something other than being Filia's friend, and she certainly didn't complain.
Filia's connections only seemed to get more eccentric from there. One in particular was a friend considering enrollment. Filia introduced her when she visited the school during lunch once, a ridiculously polite girl with blue-ish skin and a long old-fashioned dress. One of Filia's acquaintances in choir was skeptical when the preteen showed interest in their program, but a single verse from her was enough to impress, even more so that she could sound so clear with a scarf over her mouth.
Later, Filia seemed to imply the girl - Serena? Selene? - was a fellow heiress from an operatic family no one had ever heard of, casually mentioning she had butler or something with a fancy name. While they'd never seen him in person, a couple of girls heard him talking over speaker phone once, and fanned themselves at the thought of being waited on by such a suave and gentlemanly-sounding man.
Every little detail continued to bring all manner of gossip into circulation: Filia was in witness protection, she had a cousin in the circus, she and Carol wore colored contacts, their opera friend had an in with the mafia, Carol had gotten her scars in a knife fight, Filia had never been a natural blonde, she had a twin, she had single-handedly fought the Skullgirl, she had shoplifted her hat. It was a menagerie of conspiracies that no one, not even close friends, could confirm, but still got passed around even if only for entertainment.
But there was one story that topped them all. The few who believed it were supposedly the only ones who could tell it firsthand, but they preached it like gospel.
It started with one of Filia's old flames, a known troublemaker around school. He had attempted multiple times to rekindle their (brief) relationship, and was met with increasing frustration. Where he had previously been brushed off by a spoiled heiress, he was now politely declined by someone who didn't make any indication she remembered he existed, which was somehow worse.
Eventually enough was enough, and he and his gang decided to follow her after school. A few blocks down, they caught up to her as she approached a jeep with tinted windows parked at the curb.
"Hey, Medici!" He called out, drawing her attention. "You remember me?"
"Oh, you're uh…." She searched her memory for a name, clearly embarrassed. "We're in the same Math class, right?"
"That really hurts, y'know." He took a confident step closer. "Maybe you can apologize with some that Medici cash of yours."
Then, while it could have been a trick of the light, he noticed Filia's headband sort of…shift. She quickly covered it with one hand as a low growl came from her direction and something bright yellow flashed above her bangs.
But before the boys could process that, the door of the jeep opened and out stepped -
They swore on their mothers' eventual graves.
Princess Renoir.
"Is there a problem here?" She asked, directing her unimpressed gaze at the group of delinquents.
They took two looks between her scarlet hair and the Living Weapon in her hand, and ran for their lives. They never so much as spoke to Filia again, and she came to school the next day with a smile on her face.