Hello everyone, and welcome to Hiwaya, the Secret Episode Shop! This is a collection of first chapters of longer fics I've debated writing, sparked from plot bunnies that burrowed into my brain, PMs with some of my wonderful reviewers, and random suggestions from my friends. I'll be airing stuff that's never seen the light of day here (most of them are AUs, just as a warning), though just first chapters, to see what kind of reception they get and whether or not I'll be tempted to write more about them once Belonging gets wrapped up and frees up the rest of my time. If you like a particular story idea, please let me know by reviewing! More reviews will probably result in a better chance of that particular story getting written! Also, stories I've put a little more thought into will come with an extra scene at the end. Exciting right??

Ah yes, I also have a poll going on my profile page, so please check that out and vote for your favorite type of Princess!

And now, please enjoy!

Title: Academia

Genre: Romance/Drama/Humor

Warnings: None

Pairing: ItaSakuDei

Disclaimer: I dream about owning Naruto...but then I wake up.

Academia

"Wow…"

Sakura had known the school's interior would be beautiful, the front gate had been black iron wrought to look like something out of a fairytale castle and the lawn had been evenly mowed greenery with a stand of maples in the distance, but the interior was beyond anything she could have imagined.

Varnished oak paneled the flooring, the walls were of polished mahogany, and the golden light that spilled from the high, glass windows in the entrance hall illuminated a front room that exuded opulence from the plush, brocade-upholstered armchairs to the large fireplace that stood to one side with a marble mantle.

"This definitely falls under the category of 'mansion'," Sakura muttered under her breath as she shifted from one foot to the other, feeling a little uncomfortable in a plain pair of ratty jeans and a burgundy sweatshirt with her sage-and-silver suitcase by her side. Standing there in casual clothes, she felt out of place and wishing the dark-haired man who had brought her here hadn't left her on her own.

The quiet tread of footsteps made her glance around, wary and curious, but she couldn't actually see the footsteps' owners, and the discomfort of it made her want to back into a corner. Which was why when Asuma returned several minutes later, he had a little difficulty in locating the girl standing unobtrusively beside the door, behind a conveniently placed end table.

"Come, Sakura. The headmistress is ready to see you now. Leave your suitcase here, I'll have someone take your things to your dorm room while the headmistress speaks to you."

Nodding her acquiescence – after all, what else could she do? – Sakura followed the man down a number of ornate halls as she tried not to gawk like an airhead and disappeared into the room he indicated.

In spite of the fine workmanship of the room, exuding opulence like every other room in the mansion, it was obvious that this was an office. Bookshelves lined the walls, filled with everything from science fiction novels to fat binders labeled with school semesters that were probably overflowing with grade reports and the like. The desk at one end of the office was piled high with papers, white sheets scattered over the top interspersed with what looked to be yellow and green exam sheets that still needed to be graded. And behind the desk was one of the most no-nonsense women Sakura had ever seen.

Hazel eyes watched her carefully from behind a pair of wire-rimmed reading glasses, the woman's blonde hair pulled back away from her pale face. Her chin was a firm one, with thin lips that seemed perfect for stern commands, and high cheekbones. But in spite of the forbidding aura, she smiled pleasantly enough and rose out of her seat to extend a hand for Sakura to shake.

"Hello Sakura, I'm the headmistress, Tsunade, and I'd like to be the first to welcome you to the Senju Academy for the Gifted," the woman began, settling back into her seat as she motioned for Sakura to be seated as well. "We're very glad to have you here on scholarship and we hope you will continue to achieve excellence in your various academic classes for the rest of your time here with us."

"Thank you, Headmistress Tsunade."

"Now," Tsunade plowed on, watching Sakura's reactions carefully, "there are a few matters of business I'd like to attend to before you start classes. The school here serves breakfast, lunch, and, on special occasions, dinner. During the regular term though, dinner is up to the student's prerogative. Each dormitory wing is equipped with a small kitchenette, a refrigerator, and a microwave so feel free to stock up on groceries to make your own dinners, as the school does not provide those. Dormitories also have a single washer and dryer, and participate in the school's chore rotation, but I'm sure your dorm mates will explain all this to you at a later date. Formal classes begin at eight in the morning and end at three in the afternoon, whereupon there are three hours in which you may choose to participate in extracurriculars or the like. Still with me?"

Sakura nodded, feeling a little dumbfounded under the assault of so much new information.

"Good. After six, your time is your own. The dormitories maintain a strict policy of lights out at eleven and infractions will be dealt with harshly. Other than that, each dormitory wing consists of a common room and four bedrooms, one bathroom, one kitchenette, and a laundry closet. Your dormitory is…" Tsunade shuffled through some drawers in her desk, pulling out a manila envelope with a triumphant 'Aha!' and slid the thing over to the still-stunned sixteen-year-old. "You live in the North wing, Maple room. Perfect. I believe one of your dorm mates, Konan, should be coming out of class soon. She'll help you find your room, and I'm sure she'll be happy to help answer any questions you have."

The blonde rose to her feet again, prompting Sakura to follow suit, and strode to the door with a purposeful gait. Halting at the doorway, she glanced over her shoulder and smiled. "Welcome to Senju, Sakura."

"Well, we're certainly going to be a colorful bunch."

Still startled and disoriented from her meeting with Headmistress Tsunade, Sakura bristled at the insult to her hair and turned, a vitriolic statement lodged on the tip of her tongue…only to swallow it with a gasp of surprise.

The girl so casually leaning against the wall was, for lack of a better word, cool.

She was dressed casually in a pair of pale, blue-grey capris worn low on her hips, with a sleeveless, black turtleneck with a pattern of snow-white doves tracked over the bottom hem. But it was her hair that really drew Sakura's gaze, because the hair that was pulled back into a messy bun and tucked in with an origami flower was a vibrant, striking blue.

'Okay…she probably wasn't talking about just me then with that comment about colorful,' Sakura amended mentally, doing her best to get over her initial surprise.

"I'm guessing you're the new dorm member," Konan said, her look appraising as her eyes swept Sakura's shorter form and the pointedly ignored the bustling crowd of curious students behind her. "Nice. Well, I'm Shikigami Konan, not to be confused with shinigami, because I am not a death god," the girl clarified, accurately interpreting the rose-headed girl's look of confusion, "And since you probably have no idea where our dorm is, I'll take you there. Come on."

Blinking – she had been distracted by Konan's lip piercing – Sakura was surprised to find that Konan had already turned and started off down the corridor, not bothering to check that the younger girl was with her. Muffling a yelp, Sakura dove through the inquisitive crowd and hurried to catch up.

"Um…thanks for all this," Sakura managed, still feeling rather tongue-tied but needing to fill up the silence as they went up a spiral staircase, leaving the bustle of the other students behind.

"Don't mention it," Konan replied. "New student privileges. And you'll find I wasn't kidding when I said we were going to be colorful."

"What…do you mean?" Sakura asked, hurrying to keep up.

"Blue hair, pink hair, and then there's our two roommates, the blond boy and the dark-haired one, both of whom will…Sakura?" Konan called, half-turning when she noticed the younger girl frozen on the stairs below her. "Earth to Sakura?"

"…B-Boys?" Sakura stammered, color rising to her cheeks as Konan raised an eyebrow. "Sorry, I was under the impression that the dormitories were…gender specific?"

"Sorry to disappoint you," Konan replied blandly. "The dormitories are mixed. But I wouldn't worry about the other two. They get along decently well, and I will deal with them if they get out of hand around you. Not," she added as Sakura caught up to her, "that I will intercede for you all the time. You have to learn to deal with them on your own too."

"Of course…I was just a little surprised," Sakura said, trying to match Konan's swift pace and wishing (not for the first time) that she were just a little bit taller. Barely three inches over five feet made for some difficulty sometimes.

"Here we are," Konan said without preamble as she opened the door at the top of the stairs marked 'North Wing Dormitory', and then strode across to another door on the far side of the comfortable looking common room to a door marked 'Maple Room', "and this is your place," without giving Sakura more than a second or two to gape at her new living quarters.

After the downstairs it was really just more of the same, but Sakura had lived in a modest apartment with her Aunt Shizune up until now. Everything inside Senju Academy was shockingly decadent.

Especially her room.

It was, in essence, a dorm room. It had the requisite bed, desk, and bookshelf ensemble, along with a large dresser for clothing and a mirror hanging on the wall. But it also had a huge window complete with a window seat next to the bookshelf, a thick rug on the floor, two ornate looking lamps, a bedside table with a reading light, and more pillows than she thought any girl would know what to do with.

But her marveling was interrupted by the arrival of her other two dormitory mates, a loud but cheerful, "I'd have turned in a cheery bomb as my art assignment if I could!" echoing through the common room before they caught sight of her.

Sakura's vision tunneled, blotting out the blond from her sight as she zeroed in on the face of the dark-haired male behind him.

"You!" she cried, feeling her face grow hot.

But her voice wasn't the only one.

With a jolt of surprise, her tunnel vision dispelled, and she focused on the angrily twisted face of the blond. "What?"

"You! You're…you're Haruno, right?!"

She recoiled. "How do you know my name?"

"You're the one who-,"

"Shut up, Deidara," Konan ordered curtly, cutting the blond off. "Sakura is going to be our dormitory mate. No open hostilities."

"Please don't say that, Konan," Sakura said in a quiet hiss. "I don't know this…Deidara, but I'm not exactly on friendly terms with him."

The blue-haired girl raised an eyebrow. "Itachi?"

Sakura, locking gazes with the Uchiha, felt her eyes narrow. "Yes."

"I have to say, Konan, I don't know exactly why Sakura is so upset with me," Itachi said calmly, pulling his eyes away from the rosette girl to face the cerulean blue one, "But I have no hostilities towards her in return."

"Of course you don't," Sakura snapped irritably. "I've never done anything to you or your friends."

"And I have?"

"Of course you have!" the girl growled. "You decided to leave your position as the heir to Uchiha Inc. and pursue a career in forensics. Great as that is," she said, not bothering to mask her sarcasm, "it also means you left one of my best friends at the mercy of your crazy-businessmen relatives! You left Sasuke to deal with the Uchiha elders on his own! And for that," she hissed angrily, "I think I'm well within my rights to hate you."

Spinning sharply on her heel, she turned momentarily to face Konan. "I'm sorry, I really do think this place is nice. I'll try my best not to have any open hostilities but," her smile turned a little bitter, "I don't know how smoothly the year's going to go from here." Nodding a goodbye, she disappeared into her room and shut the door."

"Get out, get out, get out!" Sakura growled at the bathroom door. She was by no means a morning person, and waiting almost an hour outside the bathroom to take her morning shower and make use of the amenities before breakfast had stripped her of what little patience she had. "Who the heck is in the bathroom?!"

"Sakura?"

The rose-haired girl turned with a half-smile, the best she could manage under the circumstances, and raised an eyebrow. "It's not you?"

Konan glanced at the closed door on Sakura's other side. "Hardly. If you want the bathroom, it's best to get up early. I hope to see you at breakfast."

Sakura flashed the older girl a quizzical look. "You…hope?"

The cerulean-haired girl smiled wryly. "Yeah, I hope."

"Oh…great."

With a tiny groan, Sakura, clad in her favorite, rose-hued pajama shirt emblazoned with "Natural Pinkette" on the front in crimson, a gift from her other best friend, Naruto, slid to the floor.

The door behind her clicked open, and in a cloud of steam, her dormitory mate exited the bathroom.

"You!" Sakura's aspen-leaf eyes narrowed. "I thought it'd be Itachi primping for an hour with his silky-I mean," she stammered, "But it was you instead. What's your problem?"

"My problem?" Deidara asked, his smile too sinister to be cheerful. "That would be you, un."

"What'd I ever do to you?"

The blond glared. "Don't act like you're all innocent, or are you just a hypocrite?" he shot at her. "You did exactly what Itachi did to you, un. Made my best friend's life hell. Remember that one time the art department at your old high school caught fire and you implicated a redhead you saw walking down the second floor hallway, un? That was him," Deidara hissed. "Now Sasori's stuck at a boarding school in Germany because of you."

The blond's eyes narrowed menacingly. "So if you think waiting an hour for the bathroom is bad, un…you can't even imagine what else I can pull."

On the other side of the door directly to the bathroom's right, Itachi leaned back against the smooth mahogany, lips twisting in the ghost of a smirk.

"This certainly promises to be an interesting school year…"

TBC

Senju Academy Rooftop, Past Midnight

"You're kidding right?" Sakura asked incredulously, her eyes flickering from Itachi to Deidara to the edge of the roof as she tried to catch her tower-mates' expressions in the poorly lit darkness. "Right?"

Behind them, the indignant sound of the teacher on dorm duty, Ebisu, huffing and puffing up the stairs to the North wing, got louder and louder, threatening to overtake the pounding in Sakura's ears.

"Look, it's either this or get caught, un," Deidara reasoned impatiently. "Come on!"

"He has a point, Sakura," Itachi said, sounding completely unperturbed as they stood there on the roof, discussing the insane. "I, for one, would not like to get caught out past curfew by that man. He wouldn't understand something like stargazing on the roof."

Seconds ticked by in silence as both boys watched her until…

"Argh! I can't believe I'm doing this," Sakura grumbled, grabbing onto Deidara and Itachi's hands. "You realize if we miss we're as good as dead, right? And even if we don't miss, we could be seriously injured."

"On the contrary, we're only one floor up and the side of the pool closest to us is somewhere between fifteen and twenty feet deep," Itachi replied placidly. "We won't miss."

"You'd better hope we don't," Sakura muttered under her breath. "One, two, three…JUMP!"

They catapulted off the roof into empty space.

I hope you enjoyed the first chapter of Academia (which I started writing after Belonging turned into an AkaSaku instead of staying an ItaSakuDei like it was supposed to)! In short, Deidara hates Sakura who hates Itachi, and Konan has to keep them all in line. How do they get from being at each others' throats to actually liking each other? I believe this is where I grin secretively. ^^

Reviews and cookies fuel the muse! Also, check out the poll on the profile! ALSO, may change the pen name from amnerine to Aria Illusi, so be aware of possible future changes!

Aria, out.