A/N: Hi! I'm super excited as this is my first Reborn! fic I've posted. this chapter is fairly long and mainly OC-centric but I promise the next chapter will have plenty of our cute little tuna-fish and the amazing Reborn with all the others.
Disclaimer: I do not own Reborn! I only own Roxie and her mom.
Everyday, this one girl wakes up in the warmth of her bed. It's decorated with a blue sky, white fluffy clouds, and a bright yellow sun that seeps friendliness. And everyday, when she wakes up, she soaks her comforter in, making sure not to miss a detail. Then she surveys the rest of her room, noting the scratches on her cream bed posts, running her hand over the smooth texture of her dark blue desk mixed with the indents made by her pushing her pencils on the paper too hard. She memorizes the way her clothes sit on the hangers in her dim closet, the light giving out every now and then. She goes around the small room, squeezes her eyes close tight, and sees how much she can picture. When she opens her big doe eyes back up and sees she missed something in her vivid picture, she goes back over to it and reassesses it. She repeats this several times over until her brain has remembered everything clearly.
That's about the time she hears her mom call her name loudly from the kitchen, "Roxie!" Not moving from her spot, she closes her eyes again and tries to picture her mom in all her glory, cooking like a maniac as always, her rose hair tied up in a messy bun with her bangs spilling into her eyes. She smiles and looks at the incoming girl holding up a pan filled with uncooked pancake batter. She tells her that she was in the middle of making her favorite breakfast for her before school. When she opens her eyes up, colorful dots fill her vision, bouncing around before dissolving into nothing. The girl looks down at the shaggy carpet she's standing on, cream with dashes of bronze mixed in randomly. She moves her foot along it for a second, taking in how it rubs against her foot like a small puppy. Then she takes a deep breath before continuing to the kitchen.
"Roxie!" Her mom calls out again; she starts to call once more when she notices she's rounding the corner, "Oh! Roxie, you didn't answer me, I was just starting to worry!" Her mom scolded her, that is until she trips over a watermelon sitting by the chair she was about to sit in. Roxie looks over at her mom, and sees her decked out in what she guessed. Her hair was tied up in the messy bun and she was holding the pancake pan. She was wearing a simple baby blue dress that was free flowing. Her apron was her signature one, a red and white plaid one that had a pocket on the bottom half. Roxie sighs heavily before picking herself up off the floor. She looks back at the watermelon that just wobbles from being touched. It settles down but Roxie continues to stare at it while taking her rightful seat.
"Sorry, Sweetie, you fail again today," Her mom frowns wistfully before going back to the pancakes. Every morning since it was announced, her mom put some obstacle in Roxie's way to see if she could avoid it. She would do it while Roxie was still asleep or at school so she wouldn't be aware of where it was. She would put it anywhere, Roxie's room, the living room, outside the door, in the bathroom, or in the kitchen. So far she had failed twenty-six times and succeeded only seven, the first few days. This one would be the twenty-seventh day she had failed in a row. That didn't make her feel better about anything.
The phone rings just as Roxie's mom slides the warm brown pancakes onto a plate. She answers it and puts it in the crook of her neck, her head pressed against it to hold it there, and puts the pancake plate on the table. She sits down across from Roxie in the only other seat, and nods, "Yes, this is Mary Rockner."
Roxie gives her mom a questioning look but her mom pretends not to notice as she listens to the person on the other side of the line. She nods again and looks at Roxie hesitantly before biting her lip apprehensively. She quickly looks away and says more quietly, "No, I'm afraid not," This sentence makes Roxie even more curious. She struggles to hear the other person, but can't hear anything, "What do you mean, it won't!?" Her mom shouts. She then calms down when she sees Roxie's widened eyes. She clears her throat and answers in a more professional voice, "Okay, that's fine. We can talk later," promptly before slamming the phone down on the hook.
Roxie raises her eyebrows at her but her mom just gets up from the table and walks towards to her room, "I'm going to go fix my hair, afterwards, I can take you to school, alright?" Roxie just nods. Her mom leaves and she stares at the pancake plate for a few seconds before realizing she isn't hungry anymore. She can guess what the phone call was about, another surgery that won't work. She sighs and picks up her bag from beside the door. She finds a pad of paper and scrawls on it a note to her mom, 'I'm walking to school, see you later,' and then places it next to the stove where her mom will find it. After that, she quietly slips out the door, making sure her mom won't hear the door open and close.
The walk to school is a short one; it sits only a few blocks from Roxie's small house. She likes walking to school since she gets exercise and the outdoors calms her. Plus she won't have to go through the problem of troubling her mom more. Rounding a corner, she notices three boys in her class. The short brunette is in the middle reassuring the silver hair one as the black haired boy just laughs.
'Gokudera, Yamamoto, and Sawada,' Roxie thinks to herself, sure she's right, 'Are they friends?' She questions it, but it looks as if they are, with them laughing and joking like that. She doesn't pay much attention in class so she wouldn't know. Not because she's a bad student, but because she's too busy doodling. She waits a few minutes for them to pass before coming from behind the corner and beginning to trail behind them to school.
It's just as they're about to reach the gate that she overhears Sawada say something about 'being bit to death,' or whatever. She raises an eyebrow but continues on. That's when they reach the gate and what she thinks is the discipline committee head, by the infamous jet black hair and armband, snarl at the three and claim, "I'm going to bite you all to death for being late." That's when she understands what Sawada meant. She had never been late to Namimori Middle so she wasn't aware of the punishment for being so. And although the three, even the laughing Yamamoto and sneering Gokudera, looked scared, Roxie just shrugged and walked around the four. It wasn't until she was almost in the building did she catch the head committee member's eye. His eyes slanted even more but whipped his head around the other three and took out silver tonfas from under his coat. Roxie doesn't even think twice and keeps going.
Since she chose to walk leisurely to the classroom, she ended being over five minutes late. When she slid the door open to reveal her class, she casually strides in, ignoring the stares, "Sorry," she says simply, blowing politely to the teacher.
The teacher gives her a look of pity and shakes his head, "It's fine, Hibari-san sure is merciless, eh?"
'Who the heck is Hibari-san?' Roxie thinks confused. Then she decides to just go with it, 'If that's what he wants to think, let him think it.' Roxie shrugs her shoulders, "Sure is," After standing still for a few awkward moments with nobody saying anything, Roxie rolls her eyes and goes to her seat near the back. Why the teacher hadn't moved her up to a front desk yet, despite her not paying attention ever, puzzles her, but she just shakes it off thinking the teacher doesn't care. As she sits and prepares to doodle absentmindedly, she notices a few of the kids around her shoot her understanding pity looks, either clearly knowing who the teacher was talking about or having learned her condition. She was personally leaning more for the former. She found out she was right when some started talking about the 'fearsome Hibari-san.'
It was 20 minutes later when the trio she saw cornered by the head discipline committee walked (actually more of limped in) with singed clothes and skin with bruises running up and down them.
"Oh, Yamamoto, Gokudera, and Sawada have finally showed up, eh? Did you get caught by Hibari-san again?" The teacher asks with a defeated look. Yamamoto shrugs and rubs the back of his neck while Gokudera gives an irritated 'tch'. Sawada just nods miserably. The teacher, what's-his-name, rolls his eyes and says with an aggravated sigh, "You can't afford to be late, Yamamoto and Sawada. Especially with your grades, Sawada." This makes Gokudera glare twice as hard at the teacher, making him step back tentatively.
Sawada quickly tells Gokudera to please stop and bows deeply, "Sorry, Nezu-sensei!" The other two do so too, one with much more reluctance.
"Is that really our teacher's name?" Roxie muses. She was, for once, paying attention, and quite enjoying the show.
"Looking at those three, I guess the new girl got off easy!" One student says out loud, others nod disbelieving and whisper to one another.
'Whose the new girl?' Roxie wonders. She had been at the school for over three months so she wasn't sure if it was her. She never pays enough attention to know if there had been a transfer. 'Whatever,' she decides, going back to doodling.
After that, not much happened until the English lesson. Since Roxie grew up in America, it's her easiest class. And definitely the most boring for her. Almost every lesson she falls asleep.
As soon as the class started up, the teacher clapped his hands together and announced delightfully, "Pop quiz!" Roxie's eyes droop, she already was having trouble keeping her eyes open and it was taking a lot of concentration to keep them open, so she wasn't paying attention to when her teacher had says, "If you fail this, you'll have to take a week of reform classes after school. If you fail the make-up, you'll have another week until you pass. Nearly all the students groaned and the teacher smiles delightfully, "You'll have 10 minutes."
Papers with the quiz pasted on, were passed back. When it reaches Roxie, the last in her row, she stares hard at it, or at least as hard as she could with her eyes threatening to close, 'What the heck is this?' The longer she stared at it, the more it made her incredibly drowsy. She eventually stops fighting and falls asleep, her head falling onto the desk, smacking it with a loud 'thump'.
"Time's up!" The teacher calls loudly. The ones who were obviously displeased with their test answers groan loudly. The teacher ignores it, probably happy his test was hard. Everyone, most reluctantly, passes up their quizzes, everyone that is, except the still sleeping Roxie. The teacher see her, and just sighs, "Will someone please wake Rockner-san up?"
One student with a bruised chin later and a startled Roxie screaming out, in English, "Holy Crap, Batman!" as she gasps and she awake. She looks around confused, before realizing she wasn't in her warm bed and she certainly wasn't in her room. The other students giggle at her, others attempting to figure out what she shouted. The teacher, however, isn't amused. While tapping his foot impatiently, he gives her a look, "Rockner-san, I need your quiz."
"What quiz?" She rebutes, head cocked in confusion.
The teacher groans, 'Why me?' he thinks rudely to himself. He closes his eyes to calm down, "The pop-quiz you drooled all over," Roxie glances downward at the paper she did indeed drool on, an empty quiz with only her name filled in.
"Oh! Is that what this is?" She asks. Then she states indifferently, "Here you go," passing the quiz along to the teacher.
"Thank you," He sneers, holding the paper arm length away at the very tip, as if afraid the 'drool' would get on him. He returns to his desk and states, "Free period until all the quizzes are graded."
A buzz falls over the class, most complaining at what a hard quiz it was, "Ugh, I'm gonna have to retake it, I know it. And then I'll miss soccer practice…" This one was a red head sitting next to Roxie; she was talking to her blonde friend, who was miserably agreeing with her.
"If you're negative about it, of course you will. Cheer up," Roxie states bored and as if she can give advice. Apparently, the girl she was talking to didn't care if Roxie didn't pay attention and barely got grades above the class dunce, Dame-Tsuna.
"You know, you're right!" The ginger smiles happily, "And even if I do fail, I can just hurry with the lessons and still make it on time!"
Roxie gives a small smile of encouragement, "Sure," She pauses before tilting her head 90 degrees thinking hard, "Wait, make-ups?"
Thanks for reading! The next chapter will have everyone else coming in and also more on what's happening with Roxie. I'll have the next chapter up soon, probably within the next few days. Please review! I would love to know your opinion and what I can improve on!