Title: Don't Stop Thinking About Tomorrow
Fandoms: Ouran High School Host Club/ Highlander
Characters: Haruhi Fujioka w/ mentions of Methos, Ootori Kyoya, & rest of the casts of both shows/manga
Disclaimer: This was written to entertain the author & maybe the readers. It will butcher the timelines & back stories of both Ouran & Highlander. It was never intended for money-making purposes & the writer makes no claim of real ownership.
Rating: T for Teen
Summary: Fujioka knew she should have been more surprised at meeting her new teacher, Ootori-sempai's Uncle Adam, the world's oldest living man, but somehow it didn't bother her.
Notes: I figured that either one or the other will be a mystery to most readers, so the following are brief summaries & my notes on just how off the story will be from canon.
Highlander The show & most of the movies work on the premise that there is a sub-culture of people who are all foundlings, have lived relatively normal lives up until they died violently before their time, and now cannot be killed permanently by anything short of decapitation. These Immortals are forced into a 'Game' that no one knows how it got started only that they must fight to the death upon meeting another of their kind & that in the end the last one standing will get a 'Prize' that no one knows what it is. They are stalked & their lives are recorded by a 'Watchers Council' who "observe & record" for posterity. The oldest Immortal, Methos, is over 5,000 years old (he really doesn't know & doesn't seem to care). The show focuses on Duncan McLeod, a 400+ year old Immortal with a hero complex the size of the Great Wall of China. (Any questions, class?)
Ouran High School Host Club Ouran is a school noted for the pedigree & wealth of its students. A special scholarship student named Fujioka Haruhi has neither, rather she is a patent, super smart, & down to earth girl from moderate means. She cares little for looks, material things, or anything other than reaching her mysterious goal. On accident she ends up in debt to the school's Host Club, where looks & materialism seem to be par for the course. At first, the members use her only as a gofer or slave & think she is a he (& she does nothing to disabuse them of that notion.) Then they first discover that 'he' is cute & would make a good host & then discover that 'he' is a she (not that she will ever give up being a host- it pays off her debt sooner.)
Timeline I'm bumping back OHSHC about ten years & bumping HL up about three. Canon is shot as this is AU but I just thought you should know that it takes place about 2002, Haruhi is about 19-20 years old, the whole Kurgan thing never happened (well Connor did kill him but he didn't kill Ramirez) so Juan Sanchez Villa-Lobos Ramirez is about being a Casanova & Methos is known to be an Immortal by only Duncan & those he knew in the past
It was a sort of secret that everyone knew and it was an elephant in the room every time a student came back from a holiday with wide eyes and a number of cuts, bruises, & a story that they couldn't tell. At Ouran, anyone who was anyone in class A and even a few in class B tended to have an Aunt or an Uncle who wasn't related by blood, was usually a foreigner, and couldn't die.
All who did were sworn to silence on the subject the moment they understood what it all meant, and they kept that secret to their graves. Once in a while they'd meet their honor bound relative and a few even were pulled into the danger that surrounded their lives. By the very nature of their kind their 'nieces' and 'nephews' were never pulled into direct battle, but being used as a hostage or helping to draw out another of their kind was almost normal.
These 'aunts' and 'uncles' were known as Immortals and unless decapitated they didn't die. The older a family, the more likely that family owed some part of their fortune to an Immortal. As such, honor dictated that family would help the Immortal they were beholden to, even to the point of death.
Not that Haruhi knew anything about that while she attended Ouran. She was class A, but only because she was a scholarship student and because of that, a novelty. She knew nothing of Immortals, the Game, Watchers, or even the least bit about swordplay outside of the fact that swords were usually big sharp knives that one should look at but not touch. She was a law student now at Tokyo University and was very close to ending her third year of studies. Ouran was a memory for her and occasionally her old school directory was flipped through by her roommates who all thought it was a trip that she knew so many scions to most of the old fortunes, major corporations, and zaibatsus.
Usually, after they giggled over her directory, yearbooks, and memory books, they would take her away from her studies to go to the Karaoke bars to get drunk and sing pop songs. She tended to sing American or British pop, with a few old V6 songs mixed in, and she only sang after she was rather buzzed on saki and cheap mixed drinks. After she sang her songs, made fun of her friends, and ignored the males in the bar, she often left on her own. It wasn't smart, but she was the one with the earliest classes out of her group and she only missed class if she was deathly ill.
She took a shortcut, like she did every time. Haruhi didn't see the shadows of her soon to be killers as they came up behind her. She felt the pain of a knife in the ribs and a blunt object hitting her just bellow her skull and was soon unconscious as her killers looted her body and left her to bleed out. No one saw. No one called the authorities. No one noted that Haruhi was ever hurt because after an hour of lying dead, she awoke, saw the blood and examined her shirt and cursed the gods before she ran to her flat to change for class.
After that things seemed normal. But there were new fact of life she picked up on. She figured out that she was now healing far faster than normal, and she hid it. She discovered her memory was sharper and more retentive than ever, and she learned how to be just above average for exams. She also quickly picked up on the fact that when she got a headache, it was a good idea to go home, get into a group of people, or run to the nearest shrine or church. Haruhi was practical to a fault and quicker than the average girl, she knew there was something weird about her now, but she also knew there was no point in worrying as long as she took the proper precautions.
It was spring before she learned what she was, and it was at a sakura blossom viewing party that Ootori Kyoya invited her to that she met her teacher. The party, at the old shrine that Ootori owned, had turned into a host club reunion along with a number of Ootori's business contacts, friends, and a few family members. Suoh Tamaki and the Hitachiin brothers latched onto her as soon as she walked under the blossoms and under a tree Ootori was sipping tea with Mori, Hunny, and a foreigner with one of the oddest noses that she had ever seen before. When she set eyes upon Ootori's guest, one of her little warning headaches started up and the man met her eyes with a cool, evaluating gaze that she was quite immune to after three years under Ootori's scrutiny.
"Ah, Uncle Adam, this is Fujioka Haruhi, a friend from a club at high school. Haruhi-chan, this is my uncle, Adam Pierson. He came from Europe just in time for this party." Ootori said in his chilled and polished tone. The man, Pierson nodded at her with a slight smile now, which Haruhi felt herself return as she joined the group. Her headache was slowly fading with the time she was in his presence, and she hoped that it was a good thing.
"It's a pleasure to finally meet you. Kyoya-kun and his friends were just telling me all about you."
"Hm, I wonder why I wasn't sneezing then." Haruhi said with a small huff of amusement as Souh tried to explain how they weren't really talking about her behind her back nor was it anything bad, other than their first impressions of her, her clumsiness, her poverty, and really everything about her other than her looks and her brains. As he blustered, Haruhi found herself almost missing high school, but not quite.
"So, who is your teacher?" asked Pierson with genuine curiosity. Haruhi smiled.
"I attend Tokyo University's School of Law, why do you ask, sir?" Pierson looked surprised at her answer.
"You have no other teacher?"
"No. Why?" Hunny looked up from his cake.
"Ah. Is she like you then?" he asked and Pierson nodded.
"Yeah. Haruhi, have you noticed lately that you aren't getting ill, healing far too quickly, or getting headaches around certain people?"
"Hm, yes. Not that any of it is your business, but yes, and I've been hiding it all, so how did you notice?"
"You and I are both Immortal."
"Okay. I can see that, especially after I woke from the dead when those thugs attacked me. And the headaches warn me of another Immortal, right?"
"Correct."
"So why don't they follow me onto holy ground?"
"You've discovered that little trick? Smart girl." Pierson smiled, "I think you'd be a pleasure to teach."
"Just as long as you don't interfere with my studies, I only have two more years of school left."
"I can appreciate that." Pierson said with a smile and Haruhi was very surprised to see the smile repeated on every face in their little circle.
She supposed that she really ought to be more impressed that her teacher was the eldest of the known Immortals, but she wasn't. For her, the age, the attitude, the tricks, and the history of her teacher rather fit with the family he was most connected to. It rather made sense that the 'shadow king' of the host club & the scion of the largest zaibatsu had her teacher as a role model and tutor.
The man was a consummate actor, and proved it by becoming a Welsh exchange student in her classes. No one, not even her, could tell where the college student ended and Methos, the former Pale Horseman and five thousand year old man began. Well, that was until they entered the training room, where Methos and occasionally Death were merciless in preparing her for the horrors of living through the Game. Haruhi, still practical, shunned her personal feelings about what he put her through, as she knew that she did not want to die young and as some stupid headhunter's appetizer.
She was also learning the ins and outs of hacking through databases and creating new lives out of nothing. Planning for future lives, investments, and a myriad of other topics were all taught in depth and Methos gave her no room for error. Haruhi actually grew to enjoy the beauty of unraveling firewalls and encryptions. As her final test in computers, Methos told her of the Watchers Council and their database of known Immortals. Within a week she tracked down their website, hacked through the protections and started actively avoiding both her watcher and the Immortals that the database said were in Tokyo.
When she finished law school, Methos declared her trained and advised her to wait another hundred years before even thinking about taking a challenge. Haruhi was also gifted swords from every member of the old host club, which was sweet of them in a rather odd way.
And she'd rather they had given her Giant Tuna instead.