Uhm, I accidentally deleted this story so I'm reposting it o.o This is a high school version of Final Fantasy XIII Starring my favorite characters. I hope you like it =)
Okay, first, obviously I had to change their ages.
Lightning: 18 Snow: 17 Hope: 14 Serah: 15 Vanille: 15 Fang: 18 Sazh: Same age.
Second, I have a specific outfit I'm going to use for Lightning in a few settings so here is the link to the picture: http:/nicegal1[dot]deviantart[dot]com/art/Lightning-Wallpaper-204027498 This isn't my work! All the credit goes to nicegal1 (aka Jess) for creating the picture but the outfit usage is of Square Enix. (It's Lightning's Aya Brea alternative costume from Dissidia 012) Without further interruptions, here goes nothin'! (I hid some other Final Fantasy characters in here from past games, can you find them all? ;3)
Vanille looked at herself in the mirror checking for any stray hairs sticking up or if her make-up smudged in any place. She wasn't one for wearing a lot of make-up just some mascara and eyeliner and just enough lip gloss to make her lips a tad shiny. Her outfit consisted of pink skinny jeans with black designs and a black shirt cut to show her shoulders with pink straps seemingly like a tank top on her shoulders to hold the shirt up. Her skate shoes matched in color to the rest of her clothes. She hoped it looked okay. It felt like it was her first time just putting on clothes for herself.
Two loud honks sounded outside. Probably Hope's mom coming to pick her up. Her friend's mom often did so since Vanille's house was on her way to the school. Vanille grabbed her bag and hurried down the stairs and out the door.
"Hey, Vanille!" Hope called waving to her from the car window. He moved over a seat as she hopped in. "Ready for high school?" He sounded so excited.
"Not really, all those older kids are going to be so mean probably! We're only Freshmen Hope! Freshmen always get teased…" Vanille toyed with her bag's strap moving the shoulder cushion up and down slowly.
"No we won't, Vanille. All of the older students will be too busy trying to act cool, so they won't have time to mess with us. It'll be fine, don't worry!" He nudged her shoulder playfully.
Hope had been her best friend ever since elementary school. The two had always stuck together even when their other friends moved or split apart from them. Hope was usually left out of things because his birthday was so much later than all of the other kids' making him the youngest out of his grade. Vanille on the other hand had a birthday that was just a little earlier than most students'. It made her older for about a month or so.
Two giant Behemoth statues stood on either side of the walkway into the school. The Behemoth was obviously the school's mascot according to the banner above the statues.
Welcome back, Behemoths! It read in red and gold lettering. Vanille wondered if the school would be just as scary as its mascot looked. The only thing stronger than Behemoths were the Fal'Cie themselves.
Mrs. Estheim dropped them off at the base of the parking lot and waved goodbye bidding them good luck. Vanille had the feeling they would have anything but.
"Come on, Vanille! We don't want to be late!" Hope grabbed her by the arm and pulled her along.
A motorcycle engine revved behind them and zoomed in front of them into the empty parking space nearly knocking them down. The bike was black with neon green décor and chrome trim. The rider's jacket was also black and neon green along with their helmet. They had on a pair of loose, but not baggy, navy digital camouflage pants and black military boots. Vanille couldn't tell the gender since the jacket was bulky, too. Whatever hair the person had hid under the jacket and their helmet.
"Jerk!" Hope shouted at the person before resuming his fast paced walk.
Who was that? Vanille wondered. Oh well, I'll probably find out at some point.
"Can you believe that jerk? They nearly killed us, and on our first day, too. Tch." Hope shook his head. "Where's your homeroom, Vanille?" He took out the slip of paper with his class schedule and homeroom number on it.
Vanille did the same trying to decipher the tiny print. She wondered how the people making their schedules could even read this when they typed it.
"Uhm, it says Room 412 I think. It's hard to tell with this tiny writing." She smiled. "What's yours?"
"Oh, mine's Room 411. It must be going by our last names. Makes sense I guess." He flipped his schedule over to the side with the map. His finger traced from the spot they were at until he found the 400-Hallway. The school was concrete and red from its bricks. It had a free area in the middle. The gymnasium was in the back and the cafeteria to the far left facing toward the open area. The administrative offices were immediately to the right of the entrance to the school; their windows were adorned with school pride paint and banners.
Vanille walked into the heart of the school watching all of the students conversing with one another in their set groups. She saw a few people from their middle school but not as many as she thought there would be. Then again there were five high schools in the area to make up for the many, many middle schools around. She took a deep breath and followed her friend to the entrance of the hallway where they figured they would wait until the morning bell rang to begin school.
The bell finally rang for school to start and the two walked a bit cautiously to their rooms. Vanille could tell Hope was finally realizing how nerve racking their first few weeks was going to be. Although, he would have a better time than her sometimes.
"Well, see you later, Vanille." Hope gave her a half-hearted smile and entered his class.
Vanille's heart raced as she turned the metal handle and opened the door to the classroom. There was only about two or three students seated at the moment. One was a boy with short, spiky dirty-blond hair and looked really athletic. A girl with shoulder length brown hair with a mild gray tint sat next to him reading a novel. The last girl had black hair sort of messy sat relaxed in the second to last seat of the last row; she wore a more gothic-rocker style attire.
The room itself was nice and comforting to Vanille. Pictures of chocobos doing scholastic activities decorated the walls along with other colorful posters. The back wall behind the rows of desks was a whiteboard with Rules and Obligations and Policies written and taped up. The schedule for classes and the three lunches was written largely in a space.
Slowly Vanille placed herself at the last desk of the first row. It's not that she didn't like teachers but she became paranoid about other students whispering about her and staring at her. She often felt this way after the…incident in the fourth grade when two girls had written "Loser" on the back of her white shirt in black marker. Her parents were working that day so she had to go the entire day with that shirt on inside out. That day she had met Hope, and he lent her his jacket for the rest of the day and his mother drove her home.
The school bell made her jump slightly from her daze. The last few students slinked in hoping to get unnoticed by the teacher. A cheery strawberry-blond took seat next to Vanille smiling at her as she did so.
"Don't worry," the girl whispered, "Mr. Sazh is really nice! The board says 'Mr. Katzroy' but he doesn't mind if you call him by his first name."
For some reason the girl made Vanille smile with her pink shirt and red plaid skirt with black lace and a transparent sleeveless shirt on top. Would she make a new friend already?
"Hey, kids!" Mr. Katzroy smiled looking over his new class of fresh faces. He was an average height black man with a moderately large afro and friendly eyes. "Alright so here are the basics: My name is Mr. Katzroy but you can call me Sazh or Mr. Sazh. This is your homeroom! I like having a casual relationship with my kids rather than a professional one." He looked toward the door and lowered his voice slightly holding his hand next to his mouth, "I don't mind you listening to music as long as you do it when I'm not talking or teaching. I don't mind if you eat your breakfast in my room just don't leave a mess! If I can eat my food when I want then so can you!" He sighed sarcastically and unfolded a piece of paper and getting a pen. "Now it's time for that boring stuff the boss guy makes me do. Let's call roll."
The atmosphere relaxed a little as Mr. Sazh spoke. He had a sarcastic way of speaking and his eyes sparkled when he joked around. A smile crept over every face in the room including Vanille's. Her muscles tensed which she didn't realize had been hurting until they were relaxed.
"See? Told you he was pretty cool," the pink-haired girl winked.
I guess she saw how tense I was earlier. Vanille breathed deeply.
"D-Dia?" Mr. Katzroy called looking over the rim of his glasses.
"Here!" Vanille piped.
"How do you say your name, kid?" He asked raising an eyebrow.
"Oerba Dia Vanille, sir." Her voice shook a little despite her relaxing.
"Man, what a strange name. Does it mean anything? Like an origin?"
"It means Vanille of the Dia Clan of Oerba, sir." Vanille took a lot of pride in her name.
"Clan, huh? Must be a family history thing. Pretty interesting, anyways, uhm, Serah Farron?"
"Present!" The pink-blond waved a hand.
Farron? I thought this was the homeroom for students' last names starting with 'D'.
"If your last name starts with an 'F' then why are you here?" Vanille whispered.
"I don't really know, honestly. I guess they just got it mixed up, or put me here since Sazh knows my family, well my sister anyways, pretty well. He's a sports coach, too. My sister does a lot of sports and physical stuff. I just do it enough to keep fit."
At that description Vanille pictured a tall girl with short hair dressed in gym clothes and holding a basketball or hockey stick.
"She sounds…tough." Vanille was careful in choosing her words around the girl for fear of offending.
"Who? Sis? Nah! She's a big softie really. She just acts tough to scare people off. Although, she did put three of the strongest boys on the wrestling team in the hospital…"
Vanille added 'scary' and 'can-kick-my-ass-in-a-flat-second' to her earlier description.
Serah Farron and Vanille talked for the rest of homeroom once paperwork and planners were handed out and the class was free reign. She got to know a lot about the girl and her family. She learned Serah had lost both her parents at a young age and her sister had changed drastically after the event. Apparently her and her sister lived alone in the house their parents had given them in their will for when they were older. Their relatives paid the bills and checked up on them every weekend or so. Their aunt and uncle tried to keep them but Serah's sister refused saying it was too much for them at the time. The reality of it was their aunt and uncle had ditched their sickly mother to shop in the big city leaving their only parent left and dying right in front of the siblings' eyes.
"That's horrible!" Vanille gave her a sympathetic look.
"Yeah," a distant look came to the girl's face, "I miss it sometimes." Her expression immediately became happy again. "But then I remember I have Claire and everything will be okay as long as I have her by my side."
The bell rang to end homeroom and the two girls said their goodbyes heading in different directions. Vanille's classes, she found, were scattered across campus going up and down stairs and running to opposite sides of the school. If she wasn't fit now she sure would be ripped by the end of the year. After homeroom she had Math, then Fal'Cie and L'Cie studies, and then lunch.
She breathed in deeply and closed her eyes taking in a surprisingly good scent of baked chicken and corn-on-the-cob with mashed potatoes. Her stomach begged her to hurry and find a seat already. Hope waved to her from a nearby bench.
"Over here, Vanille!" Two boys sat next to him. One with spiky blond hair and one with bright green-blue.
She smiled and strolled cheerily to the table. A pen she had half-heatedly stuffed in her pocket slipped out. She bent down to pick it up and was taken aback by the person that passed her.
Blue camo pants…and those boots! She quickly stuffed the pen in her bag, but when she looked up again she saw the pair of legs disappear as the motorcycle driver went outside.
Damnit! She cursed.
"Come on, Vanille, hurry up." Hope gestured for her to come quickly.
She sighed and sat down at the table smiling and cutting up her chicken. "Who are your new friends, Hope?"
"This is Maqui from History class," Hope gestured to the boy with blond hair and goggles with odd snowboarder attire, "and Yuj from my homeroom," this was the boy with long blue-greenish hair. At least his clothes were a more common style.
Vanille smiled warmly at the two boys. The mystery of the biker's identity still gnawed at the back of Vanille's mind. It would have at least been nice if she knew the gender. Knowing that would at least cut down half of the school's population. She played with her food thoughtfully not minding the obnoxious conversation of the three boys in front of her.
A bell rang ending lunch and she set off to her last four classes. English, History, Gym, and Chemistry occupied her mind. Unfortunately they didn't occupy her mind for very long. The core classes were easy review mostly and Gym was just assigning lockers and uniforms. Kids rushed from their classrooms at the last bell nearly knocking the smaller students onto the tile. Vanille kept close to the wall so she wasn't in the middle of it. Hope wasn't in this hallway she guessed and made her way a bit quickly to the entrance of the school.
That was pretty fast for a first day of school.
A glimpse of bright green caught her eye ahead of her. There! She stood on her toes trying her best to push past the crowd.
"Hey, wait!" She shouted but her voice was lost in the sea of students.
Between her shortness and a group of tall boys in front of her Vanille couldn't see anything but a sleeve of the biker's jacket. She found a free space and bolted toward the parking lot. She had to see who that person was. She just had to! She didn't know what made her want to see the person. Perhaps she was intrigued. The idea of not knowing this person and them mysteriously disappearing right in front of her made her even more interested. She broke free of another clump of people and the tall boys had finally scattered to their vehicles.
"No, wait!" She yelled as the rider zoomed off exiting the school grounds.
Vanille took this time to catch her breath.
"Hey, Vanille!" Hope called to her from his mother's car in a parking space near the front.
Sighing Vanille climbed into the back and hung her head in disappointment.
"So, how was your day?" Mrs. Estheim glanced at her in the rearview mirror.
"It was…interesting." Vanille smiled broadly.
Hope explained his day elaborately on the ride back home and Vanille half listened, half stared out of the window. She said her goodbyes and got out of the car and headed straight for her bedroom. Her parents weren't home yet as expected. She fell down onto her bed after changing into more comfortable clothes and closed her eyes. She couldn't stop thinking about what an odd and eventful day her first day had been.