Chapter One – The hero is in a new environment!

"Hiya everyone! I'm Alfred F. Jones and I'm this class' hero!"

Okay, so maybe that wasn't the best way to introduce myself, but hey, I was kind of a dork in high school and those kinds of comments usually made girls giggle and blush. And this time wasn't any different.

"Oh my gosh he's so adorable!"

"I'd definitely let him be my hero!"

"I know right? He's such a cutie!"

You'd think that stuff like this would only bite into elementary kids or something, but it was still the same reactions – most girls acting all stereotypically objectifying and guys sighing because they thought I was a dumb-ass – even though we were fifteen (some were already sixteen but that's not the point here). I wanted to be popular and I wanted to be cool and unique or whatever and this was definitely awesome. I mean, I am a pretty cool hero, right?

"Ahem, well, Mr. Jones, please take a seat," Mr. Beilschmidt, the teacher, said and waved his hand towards the desks.

"Will do, sir!" I said with a huge grin and made my way to sit at the back of the class next to a formal-looking Asian guy who was doodling something in his math notebook.

"Hi! I'm Alfred!" I introduced myself and took out my books while smiling at the boy's blushing expression as he tried to cover up what he'd been drawing.

"H-Hello, my name is Kiku Honda, it is a pleasure to meet you," he said quite formally with a slight – Japanese? - accent and turned a page on his notebook so that I couldn't see what the previous page held. I figured it was something secret and I really wanted to know what it was. I mean, come on! Everyone loves a good secret! And to top it off I was an excellent secret-keeper!

"Hey dude, what're you drawing?" I asked him and leaned a bit towards his desk.

"N-Nothing!" he exclaimed and a slight pink tinge appeared on his cheeks.

"Mr. Jones, would you please stop harassing Mr. Honda and turn your attention to the lesson?" Mr. Beilschmidt cut in, causing girls to snicker and glance our way, and I was forced to leave Kiku alone. Well, at least for the math lesson. I decided that I would definitely have to check out his drawings later. Just to be sure.

I didn't really care for maths and so I started to look around the class to see if there was someone I'd definitely want to be friends with – or stay clear of.

In the front-row there was a snobby rich-looking dude who was secretly holding hands every once in a while with the girl who was sitting next to him. It really baffled my mind how a tomboyish girl like her would ever go out with such a stuck-up guy. Or that's what it seemed like, at least. Behind them was an albino (was he really an albino? At least his hair was super silvery, almost white and he had reddish eyes), who was occasionally casting pained glances at their joint hands and the guy.

Somewhere quite in the middle of the class was a seemingly tall guy who was smiling. And that smile wasn't like "Hi, nice to meet you". It was more like "Hi, nice to kill you with this freaking axe I have behind my back". He seemed like trouble. He was wearing a scarf and a pretty thick coat. What was up with that guy? It was pretty warm inside anyways.

I continued to scan the room and then noticed someone I couldn't get my eyes off of for the whole period. He was sitting one row in front of mine and a bit to the left. In a perfect staring-spot from where I was. He was one of the few people along with Kiku who were actually paying any attention to the teacher. I couldn't quite put my finger around it, but he gave me a weird but comfortable feeling of light-headedness. He had messy, blonde hair which seemed to be sticking out in every direction and a pair of vivid, beautiful green eyes, framed by huge but surprisingly cute eyebrows, the almost poisonous green concentrated closely on the black board and-

Wait.

Wait a minute.

Hold on.

He?

No. Nope. I was one-hundred percent sure that I was not gay. Nope. I'd only ever dated girls. I'd only ever even thought about girls. A guy – an admittedly cute guy – hadn't even crossed my mind in that kind of context.

Or actually… My mom had told me that they wouldn't care if I was gay (which I of course denied at the time, being completely oblivious for a change)… I pushed the thought to the back of my head, telling myself that I'd just mixed up my feelings of wanting to be his awesome heroic friend and wanting to be his boyfriend. I was in a slight state of denial, which now seems idiotic, but hey, I was a total dork in high school.

And it would've been fine if I'd just left it at that. But I just couldn't stop staring. He was so gorgeous. I told myself that it's a-okay to stare at my friends. Except that this guy probably didn't know anything else about me than my name and that I was totally an awesome hero. But anyways, I kept on staring. After about ten minutes or so, he noticed and glanced at me. When he saw that I had actually been staring at him he just huffed at me and turned back to his notes. It made him look totally adorable, by the way. In an I-totally-wanna-be-his-friend kind of way, of course.

The class ended and I turned to Kiku to steal his notebook and spy on his drawings but I noticed that he'd somehow already left. He was seriously like a ninja or something. A really polite ninja.

"Hey, new guy!" I jerked my head up and noticed that the albino guy was waving at me from the other side of class. I waved back with a grin, put my books quickly in my bag and walked over to him. He had a mischievous smirk as he introduced himself. "I'm the awesome Gilbert Beilschmidt!" he exclaimed and stuck out his hand. "Alfred Jones," I replied and shook it. Wasn't the teacher's name Beilschmidt? They didn't look similar at all though, with the teacher's long, blonde hair being pretty different from Gilbert's-

"Awesome enough to have to go through sophomore year twice?" I heard an elegant voice stop my musings and turned my head to notice that the stuck-up snob dude was standing behind my back, the girl putting away their books a couple of desks over, probably listening in on our conversation. I really didn't like his tone; it was like he thought he was somehow above everyone else and definitely above Gilbert.

"Hey, that wasn't exactly my fault", Gilbert replied through his teeth in defence.

"What ever you say," the snob huffed and turned his attention to me. "I'm Roderich Edelstein. And that girl over there", he nodded towards the tomboyish girl who was just finishing putting her books away, his voice turning a bit dreamy. "is Elizabeta Héderváry." She walked over with their bags and smiled at me. "Hey", she said with a slightly devilish smirk. "We should get going, Liza", Roderich said and Elizabeta nodded in agreement. "See you around? You seem like a nice enough guy", she said to which I nodded and they walked away from us.

Gilbert had been staring down at the ground but he perked up immediately after Roderich and Elizabeta left.

"I assume you don't know anyone at this school?" he said with that smirk of his and I shook my head. "Well, there is my brother, Matthew; he's in class B, but other than him…" I shrugged.

"Awesome! I'll introduce you to my friends then!"

"Yeah, cool", I said and grinned as we began walking out of class to get to the cafeteria for lunch. I was relieved that I'd gotten to know someone already, but I wasn't surprised. I'd been popular at every school I'd ever attended to.

"Hey, wait!" a voice with a slight British accent exclaimed behind us. It sounded like he'd probably come from England. Oh man. He ha a nice voice. And a nice accent.

"What is it, eyebrows?" Gilbert asked and laughed as he received a well-aimed glare from the cute – apparently British – guy I had been staring at during class. As I turned around, my breath almost hitched in my throat. I mean, now that we weren't sitting down and I noticed how short he was and actually got a good look at his face, damn. I actually blushed a bit. I just really hoped he didn't notice, because I just wanted to be his friend and nothing more. Or that's at least what I told myself at the time. And he didn't seem to, at least.

"I just figured I should introduce myself, being class president and all", he said aiming the last words at Gilbert and held out his right hand for me. "I'm Arthur Kirkland. If you have anything to ask about the school or need a tour or something, I'll be here. I'm the class president."

"Y-yeah, cool." Did I actually just stutter? Oh God, this wasn't going very well. I shook his hand and introduced myself. Withoutstuttering.

"Oh, and if you want to stay out of trouble, steer clear of Gilbert and his friends", he said. I just laughed.

"Well you clearly didn't want to, then", Gilbert said and winked as Arthur blushed. "I-I… That's different!" he exclaimed, and since I honestly had no idea what they were talking about I just smiled obliviously.

I went to lunch with Gilbert and we sat into a table with just two other guys. One was a guy with wavy blonde hair who kept flirting with everyone around him and the other just smiled and ate his lunch consisting of tomatoes. His whole plate was full of tomatoes. Just, how? Why?

"Hey, guys!" Gilbert greeted them as we sat down and the blondie clearly checked me out and made me a bit uncomfortable. He laughed a bit. "I see you've found some, how do you say, fresh meat, Gilbert", he said with a thick French accent and laughed some more as Gilbert punched his arm. "Oh come on Francis, you've a boyfriend. Don't even think about it."

"Ahaha, I wasn't thinking like that", he said and smirked as Gilbert hit him again. I wasn't very convinced about that. "I'm Francis Bonnefoy."

"Alfred F. Jones."

"I'm Antonio", the tomato-guy said and smiled warmly.

"We're the bad touch trio. Extremely good-looking and popular", Gilbert said with a proud grin. "And also awesome. Or at least I am." I laughed a bit at the statement. "You don't seem overly popular to me", I said with a cheeky grin and Francis stared at me, eyes wide in mock-horror.

"How dare you say that? Just wait until the cafeteria fills up, you'll see", he said and winked at me.

And he was right. Just sitting at their table during lunch had gotten me almost forty Facebook friend requests. And I met a bunch of seemingly nice people. And I had the pleasure of watching Francis flirt with everyone and everything, making girls giggle and Gilbert hit him constantly. I kind of felt bad for his boyfriend.

To be continued...

A/N: Hi everyone! I really felt like writing a high school fic and so here I am!

This is pretty much my first attempt at writing fanfiction and English isn't my first language, so please don't be very harsh yet! ^^; I'd be grateful for pointers on where I went wrong or the grammar is weird etc. And I hope I understood the American school system correctly. It's so different to what I'm used to…

So yeah… You probably already know who Francis' mystery boyfriend is, but well, more of that next time!

The story will at least mostly be from Alfie's point of view, but if I suddenly choose to put an Arthur chapter or something, I'll let you know.

Oh, and Mr. Beilschmidt is Germania. And the title of this fic has to do with later shenanigans...

I wasn't sure of what to rate this thing, but I put it in T, just in case.

Thanks for reading! :3