Disclaimer: I do not own the manga/anime Gakuen Alice. Manga are a form of Japanese comics, and my story, "Alice," is a fanfiction piece inspired by the manga. All credit goes to the mangaka, the genius of a woman, Higuchi Tachibana, for the characters and setting. The plot, however, is my own invention.

Alice

I.

The air was sweet and warm like maple syrup, but so thick that after inhaling she felt as if she'd swallowed a cup of dishwasher soap. Mikan closed the window.

A cloud of her hot breath hid the oak tree in front of their little house, and she wiped away the condensation with her sleeve. She sighed as she examined the cracks in the glass that were taped over with shiny, clear duct tape. She knew why her mother didn't bother to get the glass replaced. Damaging village property was a crime, and it was impossible to find a repairman brave enough to keep his mouth shut.

It was five whole years ago when Tsubasa's bad pitch had ruined the window and promptly ended their baseball game in the backyard. Mikan had been ten, and Tsubasa twelve. He had apologized profusely and looked anticipant of his punishment as intrusive, eager tears ran down his cheeks. Mikan's mother had merely patted him on the shoulder and told him to be careful. Mikan had been happy to realize that she wasn't angry at him either.

Now she drew the curtains closed and shook her head in an attempt to order her thoughts. Today was the day that she was heading to Alice Academy, the day that had been etched into the timeline of her life since before she was born. As an Alice, she, too, was going to be sorted into a category and shipped off to do her part in society, leaving so much behind—her mother, her past.

The thought made her sad, but also kind of giddy.

She crossed over the length of her small, plain room and stood at the entryway, surveying it whole. It was dull for sure—dreadfully dull, but it was home. Inside the closet was a snug, tiny storage room. When the Invigilo officials would pay surprise visits, she would hide there. She didn't want to answer their stupid questions.

"What do you like to do in your free time?"
"How do you feel about your fellow Alices? The Invigilo?"
"What would you do if your Mother could no longer...service your community?"

Mikan knew all her answers by heart now. Sing... I love them... I'd take her place.

It was expected. Villagers like Mikan were made powerless, enslaved by their inherent powers—enslaved by their Alice blood. They did not own their alices. The Invigilo did, and they could do whatever they wanted with them.

Mikan had known about her alices since she was five. The first to develop was her Nullification alice-the one she didn't mind so much. Because of it, Mikan was constantly canceling out alices within a certain distance from her—not deflecting or absorbing, just nullifying. Alices fizzled out around her; it was kind of like trying to light a match in the eye of a hurricane, or losing your voice just as you tried to scream. Frustrating. But for her, it was like breathing, blinking, or using her right hand. She had to think to stop. And she liked feeling untouchable. She liked that she wouldn't have to fight her own kind.

But Mikan was blessed with more than her father's Nullification. She was a Multialice. She had two alices instead of one; Nullification and what the Invigilo called SCI. But it wasn't much of a blessing to Mikan. A thief. Mikan's SCI alice made her into a thief, not a hero. So she hated it.

Mikan fell away from her deliberation with two quick blinks and noticed that she'd been fiddling with the splinters on the old, wooden door frame. As Mikan moved to unlock her door, somewhere in the distance sirens went off. The familiar, blaring wails snapped Mikan out of her idle thinking. There would be another "Gathering" soon—a sort of assembly held by the Invigilo. The Gathering was for "Eligibles," people who had turned fourteen in the last year. Gatherings, Eligibles—Mikan could not figure out for the life of her why the Invigilo were so pretentious.

She made a beeline to her closet, glancing at the clock on the wall and starting a mental timer. She pushed through the superficial clothes that her grandfather insisted on giving her for every single one of her birthdays, and pulled her usual training clothes off their hangers and onto her body. All black. Then, humming to herself, she stuffed her feet into black combat boots.

As she headed to her dresser, she tripped over a small pouch, and stooped down to inspect it. It was cute, with all its white sparkly polka dots, and it reminded her of the pink, spotted dress she had gotten for her ninth birthday. But she didn't remember owning a pouch like this. It looked like a harmless makeup bag at first glance, but Mikan opened it while holding her breath, careful not to inhale the contents. Just last summer, a boy with the Wind alice had died after opening a package that he found on his front doorstep. Bioterrorism. Hayate Matsudaira. She remembered him from kindergarten—the kid who had too much gel in his hair on picture day. She didn't want to be like him.

Mikan didn't want to die a pointless death.

Come to think of it, she thought this was one of her mother's makeup bags. She couldn't suppress a smile as she thought of how her mother got so excited for the little village parties they had that sometimes lasted until early morning. Yuka would spend hours in her room, prepping herself, and she always came out looking absolutely stunning. She had called it "the magic of makeup," and Mikan would sometimes watch her apply it, awestruck by the sorcery. But they hadn't been to one of those parties in years. Mikan wasn't even sure if the village still had them. She shivered, thinking about what replaced the hearty sound of guitars and people clapping a beat, what she now sometimes heard in the dead of night. But she didn't hate her mother; it occurred to Mikan that Yuka was selling her body to keep the both of them provided for. It just disgusted her that her mother had to sink so low to keep them above water. She wasn't like the moms in the books. She was no longer the same mom in the family photo albums. But Mikan loved her anyway, because she was all there was now.

The Anti-Alice Organization had murdered Mikan's dad.

She didn't know who they were, or what her father had done to warrant the death penalty, and all Mikan could do was hate. Hate bubbled within her like magma that refused to cool. She clenched her teeth and counted the bag's sparkly polkadots.

Mikan peeked inside the bag and noticed that the smaller compartments carried weapons and gadgets and whatever else Hotaru could snag—a small handgun from the Southern Village, two daggers, an earpiece, its accompanying microphone and various other goodies. Grateful warmth filled Mikan's belly. Hotaru, and only Hotaru, could get her hands on stuff like this.

Mikan went on to open the main pocket of the pouch. A photo of her parents and her was tucked inside. Mikan's mouth opened slightly. The picture had been confiscated and was supposed to have been destroyed after her father died, but it was no surprise that Hotaru had somehow salvaged it. Mikan made a mental note to thank her later.

She was wasting time staring at the picture, so she closed the pouch and tucked it under her armpit. At the last second before she left her room, she realized that her hair was still down, and she quickly scanned her room in search of a scrunchie. She spotted one on her wooden nightstand, leapt for it, and ran out towards the front door, tying her unruly, brown waves into a high ponytail.

She felt an eerie slowness as she ran. Some syrupy mass flooded her senses, her heartbeat, her breath. She could barely identify the objects she passed: an old, dingy, green couch stationed up against the wall, an equally old television, a mahogany coffee table, a few wooden chairs, some antique paintings and family portraits, her mother. Her mother yelped as Mikan passed her, but Mikan didn't stop running.

"Mikan?" Yuka squeaked, and Mikan found herself braking.

She looked at her mother with steely eyes. Yuka's nightgown was rumpled, and her hair that was so similar to Mikan's fell to her waist in brown tangled webs. Mikan remembered when it used to barely reach her shoulders, but she guessed long hair was more appealing to Yuka's customers.

Yuka's eyes were the green of aged moss, glistening, distant-the way they got when she drank. Mikan's eyes grew hard; she couldn't bring herself to scold her. Too tired.

Mikan opened her mouth to speak and noticed how dry her throat was. She swallowed hard.

"Bye, Mom. Take care of yourself!" she hollered with an artificial smile. She pushed herself out the door and slammed it shut behind her, inhaling deeply. The air, she noticed, was less thick now.

"Mikan!" her mother shrieked from inside.

Before she could change her mind, Mikan took off, her feet pounding at the mud trail that led to the clearings. Her future had been laid out for her since she was born, like a hand of cards at the start of a game. There was no fighting it.

Mikan followed the trail deeper into the forest, running as fast as she could manage.

This was for Mom, she told herself. This was for Grandpa. This was for Dad. Yet Mikan was breathing much harder than she would during any other run.

She wasn't entirely sure where she was or whether she was making good time, but it was definitely better safe than sorry. Stragglers were punished at the whim of miserable, senselessly violent teenage Alices. Mikan couldn't imagine exactly why they were so messed up.

She slowed down when she started to recognize her surroundings. She was searching for a specific tree, the only tree with a knothole in the whole forest. She found it a little way to her right, and approached it in a crouch. Reaching into the knothole, she glanced around using the very corners of her eyes, making sure she was alone. Although she didn't particularly care.

After today, this wouldn't be her special hiding place anymore. She'd be hundreds of thousands of miles away.

As she swung a knapsack over her shoulder, all the hairs on her body stood up. Someone had followed her. She kept still, heightening her senses and trying to pinpoint her stalker's location.

An invisible but very loud…thing made its way toward Mikan at an alarming speed. Just as Mikan flung herself out of its range, she was slammed down onto the unforgiving forest floor, though the attack had only grazed her. Leaves and dirt and even rocks that had been swept up from their positions on the ground now rained all about her. She couldn't see herself being alive and well if it—whatever that was—had hit her full-on. Immediately she pushed herself up into a fighting stance and tried not to wince. She looked up at her opponent piercingly, ready to retaliate.

But when she locked eyes with her offender, she froze.

The pale girl facing Mikan looked at her with stony, somber amethyst eyes, and her trusty pistols were secured to her hips. One holster strap was undone however, and Mikan assumed she had used the gun in that one to shoot. She mentally thanked her best friend for using air blasts instead of bullets.

"Nice seeing you too, Hotaru," Mikan greeted her, looking her over from the toes of her black leather boots to the top of her raven-haired head. Her face brightened. Because of training, she hadn't seen her best friend in weeks. She quickly leapt up and latched onto Hotaru with a grip like death.

"You were wide open, idiot. Practically inviting me," Hotaru stated before pulling a tiny gun from inside her boot and shooting Mikan back down to the ground.

Mikan sat up after taking an air blast to the face, dusting herself off quite aggressively and checking if anything had fallen out of her knapsack.

"That hurt,Hotaru," she whined as she stood up.

"It was supposed to."

"Thought so." Mikan exhaled audibly. "Thanks for the stuff, by the way. How'd you even manage—"

"That's classified to idiots like you."

Mikan smiled, unoffended, and nodded in the direction of the clearings. "Shall we?"

Hotaru nodded her affirmative, helped Mikan to her feet, and began sprinting, nimbly navigating through the foliage. Mikan followed closely after tucking her new daggers into her boots.

In the fields, Hotaru and Mikan were only two of a lot. There were about a hundred Alices out there.

"Quit ogling. They'll think you're brain dead," Hotaru commented offhandedly, scrutinizing their future peers.

"Oh? I thought I was an idiot," Mikan replied smoothly, following Hotaru's gaze and resting her eyes on a tall male sporting a mischievous smirk.

Hotaru didn't miss a beat. "You are," she stated as she made eye contact with Mikan. "But we don't want them to know that."

Mikan nodded, looking down at her best friend's feet. Hotaru was right, of course. Show no weakness.

Mikan tapped Hotaru's shoulder as a heads-up and made her way to the handsome guy she'd spotted.

"Hold on, let me check something out," she called to Hotaru.

His profile became clearer as she neared him, and she sped up her pace. He was leaning on a speaker-box, near the stage. She had to marvel at the stage for a moment. It looked so odd, a steel and spotless alien amongst the greenery. It had to be more than twenty yards wide, decked with microphones and podiums. The Academy knew how to intimidate.

She shifted her attention back to the guy. It was him!

"Tsubasa!" his name tumbled out from her mouth at a volume almost too low for even her to hear. She couldn't believe he was here. Why was he here? Tsubasa had been an Eligible two years ago, yet with eyes reminiscent of a cornflower or a summer twilight, and hair so black it was almost blue, Tsubasa Andou stood only a few feet from her. She called his name as she ran up and leapt onto him.

He stiffened at the sudden contact, but as he recognized her face he pulled her into a warm embrace, almost crushing her.

"Mikan! Mikan, Mikan!" He held her up over his head and twirled her around the way he would to a little kid, despite her shrieks of protest. "My little junior! Mikan!" He twirled her a bit more before he suddenly froze and set her down. He stared at her, analyzing every detail of her face. "Could this be some kind of sick joke?" He pinched her cheeks. "Well, these are her baby-fatty cheeks." He inspected her hair. "And that's her wild mane, despite her efforts to tame it." She glared at him. He shrugged, and his eyes raked her over. "And that is definitely her flat-as-a-board chest and virtually featureless body. You're Mikan alright."

She whacked his head and elbowed him in his gut. He doubled over, and she smiled to herself, even though he was letting her hit him on purpose.

"I hate you," she finished with a flourish.

A comforting hand landed on her shoulder. She turned to see that it was Hotaru's.

"Don't mind him, Mikan," she started. "Some people just don't know when the truth should be said and when it shouldn't."

Mikan nodded her head in agreement, before realizing the meaning behind Hotaru's words.

"The truth?" she screeched, spinning around. Hotaru was smirking and Tsubasa was still doubled over, laughing hard. Mikan huffed, glaring at the grass beneath her.

Hotaru turned to Tsubasa and regarded him with a nod. He grinned in return.

"So you both made it, hm? I knew you would. I don't know what I'd do with myself if you two got…" he trailed off.

Hotaru tensed and Mikan shivered. They both knew he meant "if you'd gotten Disposed." No one knew what happened to Alices who "disappoint, displease or disobey" the Invigilo, but they were very rarely ever seen again, and those who returned to their villages had a silence about them. Mikan had a theory that their voices had actually been taken from them—as in their vocal cords had been extracted from their bodies. It didn't seem that far-fetched.

Mikan hadn't thought about it much, but it was generally believed that Disposal meant death. She didn't blame Tsubasa for considering it, for being scared. They were all scared. And fear was necessary—how else could Alices be kept from wreaking havoc? Alices were too powerful to let roam freely, and instilling order was the Invigilo's duty. Alices had better be scared. Scared of authority, scared of themselves.

"Sorry, sorry! Wow. I'm such a buzzkill," Tsubasa amended. "How've you two been? Still best friends I see."

Mikan swung an arm around Hotaru's shoulder. "Of course! She can't get enough of me," she said with a wink.

Hotaru threw Mikan's arm off of her and turned her attention to the stage just as the speakers came on.

"Good morning, my children!"

A stubby and chubby little man walked out to center stage, followed by a string of Invigilo officials. Mikan recognized them all from flyers she had passed or brief glances at the living room TV screen, but she had no idea what their respective names were, nor did she care. The little man had an…interesting face, not particularly young or old, impossible to tell his age. He walked stiffly, like someone who had a pole for a spine. His shoulders were pulled back, and under incredibly arched, thick eyebrows, his eyes were sharp and condescending. All his features were sharp and condescending, up to his high cheekbones, his aristocratic nose and a jaw line that could chisel through marble. He ran his fingers through his slicked-back hair as he adjusted his microphone to better accommodate his lack of height. Mikan choked back a laugh. He looked around at the faces of his colleagues before facing forward. Mechanically, the crowd uttered a greeting back. He looked pleased. Mikan looked down, opting to only listen from the speakers.

"Today, September 14th, is yet another of our annual Gatherings. Today is the day that we send our Eligibles off, with the best of training and luck, for the 19th time. Today is the day that we push further towards our goal, towards our future! Today you are reborn!"

His overly sweet and excited voice made Mikan feel itchy all over. Was it necessary to speak to them like they were five? A buzz swept over the crowd, and she realized that everyone was clapping. But Mikan wasn't moved. She didn't feel reborn. She didn't see their "goal" anywhere up ahead. She didn't know what she was striving for, what she was supposed to be striving for. She only felt a festering anger towards the deluded midget in front of her with a microphone. She wondered if she was the only one bothered, but a quick glance at Hotaru, whose teeth were clenched, put her at ease. She grabbed Hotaru's hand and squeezed softly before letting go just as quietly.

"My children, have strength! Nolite—"

"—timere, o fortissimo." Mikan finished with him. "Do not fear, my warriors." He was smiling, and she swore that each of his teeth looked like a sharpened blade. She immediately concluded that she wouldn't miss the phrase at all.

"My warriors, you will prosper. You will persevere; you will honor us. There is nothing ahead of us but success! I am immensely pleased with the results of the training installments, and even happier that I've been blessed enough to see you off. Now, you'll be escorted to the labs and receive your respective fields. And in whatever you do, do well."

There were about ten other people in the waiting room, excluding Hotaru and Mikan. This was the second waiting room they'd been in; the first was more of an auditorium, and all of the Eligibles had filed into it after they were dismissed from the Gathering. A tall, blonde woman had led them into the smaller rooms about every thirty minutes, and in small groups. With every group's departure, Mikan had felt the knots in her gut contort themselves more complexly—maybe into Constrictor knots or even Eldredge knots—until finally her name was called, among the eleven others in her group. Mikan couldn't be happier that Hotaru was with her.

"Sakura?"

Mikan jerked slightly as she heard her surname and immediately straightened.

"Y-Yes, that's me," she answered a tall man, cursing herself for stuttering. Ten other pairs of eyes stared straight at her. She scrutinized the brown-haired, lanky man. He looked to be maybe in his early-thirties and had an expression of pure boredom etched onto his face. Hotaru placed her hand gently on the small of Mikan's back and let it rest there for a beat before pushing her towards the man.

"Come with me," he said.

He led her into a dark, narrow hallway that had small rectangular windows lining the tops of the each wall. Bright, white light shone through them, giving the top third of the hallway an eerie glow, but somehow the rest of the hallway remained dark. It was so quiet that she became painfully aware of her footsteps, and his, and her breathing, and his.

"Are you nervous?" His sudden speech made her squeak.

"N-No. I'm fine, thank you," she lied weakly. He chuckled to himself, scratching his head, and then nodded as if to say Sure, okay.

Before she knew it he was waving her into a stark white room. Everything was white—the walls, the large apparatus hanging on one of the walls, the color of her skin reflected in a small mirror resting on the white side table. At his request, she lay down on something akin to a hospital bed. She tried not to move as a cold-fingered woman placed sticky, suction-cup looking things all over her body. She was looking at the white ceiling, but suddenly the ceiling was black, and then everything was black. Vaguely she thought she heard a scream before her mind went black.