First story boys here we go!
Hope's Peak Academy, the supposed bastion of well, hope for the future as the name implied. The idea of a gigantic school just for a few select individuals, the cream of the crop for the future who have not only shown potential but ability to stand at the top at a young age seemed like a preposterous idea. Certainly it couldn't really work out, yet Yumeno was still there thanks to some outside encouragement.
It certainly wasn't bad at all, but with some things in the package Yumeno would really consider using her magic to "mysteriously" disappear right before she was supposed to go and send a duplicate in case, but that would require knowing this issue beforehand and also have her save up the MP for such an act, plus finding a good spot to disappear to. Given that she didn't know Rantaro or his favorite spots to visit, that would be even more of a pain than the one currently facing right now.
That pain consisted of both Tenko Chabashira and Kokichi Ouma, both disastrous for her apart, and currently even worse of a tempestuous disaster bound to kill anyone's sanity. Luckily Yumeno could zone out enough for them to not be too bothersome, but still, she inwardly cursed Akamatsu with some hex for this mess.
Akamatsu's idea of "Hey let's strengthen our bonds by pairing up random people to sit together at lunch! We'll all become close friends! First up I'll put two of the most volatile people possible added in with someone who they both frustrate and get that over with" sounded like the first step in therapy towards mending a broken relationship on paper, but without Tojo as the only person who could possibly recreate that, it was turning out to be a disaster via yugioh obliteration.
Ouma was winning so easily that he began to dismiss Chabashira as a boring opponent even by newbie standards...and Yumeno really couldn't deny that Tenko rushing into one of Ouma's favorite games as a way to "topple down the menace from his high horse for calling such a beautiful girl ugly!" was not the way to prove anything, but his quip did sting a bit so at least the notion was appreciated.
At the very least, she was quieter than usual in order to not completely destroy Akamatsu's attempt at creating order. Yumeno still would've preferred to be with someone quiet though, maybe Hoshi since he seems like he'd respect a quiet environment, or at least seemed to when Yumeno could actually remember being near the standoffish midget.
Before she knew it, mostly due to zoning out, Chabashira lost and the look on Ouma's face was aggravating: it wasn't one of his scary faces that he occasionally pulled off but instead it was pure and utter disappointment.
"Yeesh Chabashira, I'm stunned. I'm not even sure what went on there. Even Iruma could stop degrading herself in her attempt at getting the world record for the world's most uncomfortable slut to try and have an entertaining duel. The lack of fulfillment I have from that win is like no levels of apathy that has ever happened before in all of existence." the imp insulted, and for the most part he was right.
He didn't lose a single life point and doubled his when Chabashira definitely had the cards to counter. He gave her an advantage, one that should've worked no matter the result of the shuffling, and still won by at least 10,000 life points. It was astonishing if anyone paid attention, but as nobody did the worst duel of all time would be lost in the sands of time.
"Grrrr, nobody cares what a menace like you thinks, if you challenged me in an aikido match, you'd be crying in two seconds!" the hothead responded
"Oh silly Chabashira, you'd have to touch me first, and I'm quite good at dodging!" the supreme twat responded, and again he was right, he had a natural talent for dodging attacks that weren't caused by him intentionally egging on Harukawa in order to reveal her true nature. Nobody could explain how the gremlin did it, but his irritation reached to everyone at some point as he had his fun.
"You know what, I'm done. Yumeno, I'm not going to respond to this twerp anymore for my mental health, and I'd recommend for your sanity that you do the same." the aikidoka spat out.
"Awww, don't be mean like that Chabashira, sure it'd take you 10,000 years to catch up with me if I never practiced and gave you the most useful cards for someone as inexperienced as you such as Dark Hole, but losing a card game isn't the end of the world!"
Yumeno then proceeded to watch Ouma attempt to further antagonize topics such as the flower on her head being "a truck that was flipped over on a highway and instead of killing the pedestrian it instead severely concussed them and ruined their fashion sense", but he didn't get as far as usual as she was trying to be content with simply taking sips out of her drink instead, all in her vow to be quiet for the sake of the other girls, preferring to pummel Ouma into next month when the other girls were gone so they wouldn't have to see the bloodshed.
Thanks Akamatsu, this plan is really working, isn't it?
"Awwww, well if Chabashira refuses to be entertaining, then clearly I made the wrong choice in not going to the magician!" His eyes began to sparkle, as he looked over the redhead, this making her uncomfortable as she preferred to not have her existence acknowledged at this point. "Hey, do you finally have enough energy to do anything?"
"Oh please Ouma, why would I bother, scratch that, why should I bother with you?"
"A true magician-" He started before seeing the deadliest glare he's ever witnessed from someone only half-awake, "Mage in action has been at the top of my bucket list for ages! Seeing an ultimate in action is the best chance I'll ever have!"
"And you decide to say this after calling me useless for months? At least try and make a believable lie!" Yumeno exclaimed, becoming frustrated with the pathological liar.
"This time it's true and anything I've said before was the giant lie! I know you're not useless and you can't be given how we were all scouted to be here by an Ultimate. Even that stoner with the tree-top like hair from the class above us has to be doing something right, so you being here is proof!"
Yumeno wanted to reply with a snarky comment, but she really couldn't.
"Why are you just now saying this? I have no reason to think you're speaking the truth about being interested in magic!" Yumeno didn't know that this would give Ouma ammo he was looking for.
"Not interested in magic? But like I said before, magic is the one thing I'm the most excited about! The wonders that a good magician can pull off are limitless and the true masters of the craft is stunning. After all, a master in magic and deception would be a perfect queen for my organization!"
Chabashira then proceeded to choke on her drink while Yumeno had no idea on what to do. Did he really just say she'd be a perfect queen for him? After all the nasty things he'd said he's praising her like that of all things?
"What do you think you're going to accomplish by toying with Yumeno's heart you menace?" the flower head said while forcing herself back into the equation.
"Sweet, now Miss Bores-a-lot decided to join in when she's completely uninvited, all after she was silent when actually being talked to. People say I haven't learned my place, but they're completely fine when you regularly do that!"
"Aggh!" Chabashira growled and took form of an attacking stance, all of this right before Akamatsu sensed the potential chaos and ran over to Chabashira to diffuse the situation. Unfortunately, this led to Akamatsu taking Chabashira outside of the cafeteria to cool off, and unfortunately for Saihara, he was dragged out alongside Momota in some promise to "keep order and establish peace, because that's what true men do!"
At least, that's what Yumeno thought what happened, the events were that much of a blur due to both her tendency to completely zone out, and her ability to also be lost in thought, brain almost fried at whatever Ouma's games were.
She would've spent the time to pray for Saihara due to the hurricane he was going to deal with, but that escapade ensured there was nobody left who would confront Ouma aside from Harukawa, but she's already reached her weekly limit of attempts to choke Ouma until he submits into the idea having common decency like any half-decent person would try and be capable of doing, thus leaving Yumeno alone with the boy in question.
Just utterly fan-freakin-tastic. No hex could ever make up for the pain this was going to be.
"Well, now that she's done and presumably having a tantrum outside, where were we?"
"You decided to go bungee jumping without the cord off of the nearest skyscraper."
"Ooh, I'm loving this feisty side of you Yumeno-chan!" he ignored all protests as he tugged her witch's hat downwards to slightly cover her eyes, to which she yanked it back up and protectively placed both hands on. "You do know how valuable a queen can be, right? It's a compliment so there's no need to be mad at all!"
This just served to further irritate and confuse the young magician.
"You can falsely label me a queen but you can't call me a mage?" she bitterly spat.
"All because everything I learned wouldn't allow me to see such a thing existing, but you prove that line of thought to be completely wrong and that'd be part of your addition to DICE!" the gremlin replied, far too eagerly for any sane person's liking.
Yumeno grumbled, then fiddled with the brim of her hat some more.
"Y'know," he started to continue, "they really do call queens important figures, while Tojo and Shinguji could go on and on about some drab explanation on the importance of Victorian Monarchs, there is far more to a queen than just that, and a queen is important." he stated, looking serious for the first time ever now that Yumeno thought about it. She couldn't recall an expression like this adorning his face before, and it did gain her attention.
"Queens can be the most powerful beings of them all you know, free to move wherever they wish, all while the others have their own boundaries." He went on, all while tugging on that damned checkered scarf.
'Wait...is this all a stupid chess analogy!?' she thought as she was certain she caught on. 'That jerk is just comparing my usefulness to a board game piece?'
Little did she realize that he stopped until he waved his hands directly into her eyes, causing her to blink and move her head back a few inches away on instinct, which she did have even if her low energy caused her to be a bit slow.
"Come on Yumeno-chan! Here I am practically ready to spill out everything to you for this, and even if you were to decline, which would be the wrong move, at the very least you could pretend to listen before you curse me with all of your hatred!" He yelled, before beginning yet another one of his fake crying routines.
Such a bother as always. At the very least him doing his crocodile tears this time finally snapped the slow mage to her senses, and those senses remembered that this guy is 50% cheerful asshole and 50% conniving manipulator, but it wouldn't fool her this time!
"That's enough Ouma, if you wish to actually avoid being casted with a hex, you're lucky enough that I'm willing to spare you to save some energy, so if you back off and don't bother me until you become a nicer person, I'll ignore your past actions!" she thought she perfectly responded, and then Ouma stopped his crying...just to complain some more.
"Awww, but DICE was so excited to have someone new. We're never going to use those decorations now!" he whined. Something about that did seem off though, and as much as she hated to do this her curiosity did pique her and override common sense.
"Ouma, I'm going to regret asking this, but what's DICE?" She asked, which then got him to shut up, wait a few seconds, and then pull off one of his scary smiles that would put nightmares in all of the children in Harukawa's orphanage for months.
"Ohoho, someone's curious of DICE now, isn't she?" He forced the widest smile he could've done while saying that. "And it only took you two times for me to namedrop that to notice, it looks like I'm still managing to underestimate you, Yumeno-chan!"
"Knock off the creepy vibes, just spill it!"
"Well since you're asking oh so very nicely," he began, then lowered his voice to a whisper. "Well then, I have kept the name a secret since this class is supposed to have an SHSL Detective in it and while it'd be fun, that could cause some problems, don't you think?"
"Get on with it already or I'll cast the spell now!" the impatient redhead hissed.
"Fine fine," he continued while pulling a pair of special dice out of his pockets and gave them to her. The dice had pictures of masks instead of dots or numbers on them.
"DICE is the name of my organization! Can't have a detective going around snooping for it, so I'm entrusting you with this calling card Yumeno-chan!" he gleefully responded, while causing more confusion.
"But there's no contact information on any of these!"
"Well obviously, my organization isn't going to be that simple, they could easily fall out of a pocket and that would be far too easy of a trail to follow!"
"So in other words, more of your nonsensical games just to mess with me?"
"Oh I'd never! I don't even have the time to spare to make these if I wasn't serious!" He smiled, knowing that she knew he had nothing but spare time for all of his weaselly tricks. "However, as you're clearly not interested, I'll just have to take these back." he continued, swiping them out of Yumeno's palms and put them back into his pocket.
"Y'know it really is a shame Yumeno, these chances don't come to over 99% of the population and you're just wasting it, even someone like you could really use something like this."
"I'd rather be caught in a tiger trap than be with the likes of you!"
"At the very least don't reject me so harshly you cruel witch!" he exaggerated, and would've began his fake crying again but the lunch period was over and if they didn't head to class, surely the stuck up glorified hall monitor tryhard would forcibly drag them to class.
"Ah well Yumeno, it was nice talking with you, but right now I have more important appointments to make," which was code for "if I don't get Iruma to give me an invention to defend myself, Chabashira will gladly have me forcibly stay with Tsumiki for a month", which nobody except the nurse would've minded, "so see ya later!" he rushed off, leaving Yumeno alone to gather her lost thoughts as everyone else moved on.
'What a waste of time, if this was just toda I'm gonna exhaust all energy by the end of just this semester." she grimly thought, then moved forward and stepped on something. Quietly picking up the object, she realized it was one of the dice that Ouma originally gave her. That "calling card" to speak, for whatever DICE was.
'What a pain' the mage sighed and put the die in her pocket, not wanting to risk the glorified hall monitor calling back the entire class for littering. Even if it would obviously be Ouma, her eardrums did not want anything to do with that guy.
She then head off to class while thinking of ways to apologize to Chabashira for calling her annoying. Clearly Yumeno needed to make her definition of that word much more strict after today's events. Hope's Peak Academy was far too draining for one person.
Might continue, might not, honestly debating, any ideas you have feel free to say via review/PM.