Mae sat quietly in the limousine, one hand tightly gripping her small suitcase and the other hanging on for dear life to the leather seat as the occasional bumps in the road nearly catapulted her into the seat across from her. That was not an option, even if you disregarded the potential bruising, because the creepiest, scariest, coldest girl she had ever met was currently giving her a death glare.
She sighed, wishing she had just crawled into the trunk instead, and pressed her nose against the window, staring blankly as the sun slowly became blocked by the looming high rises and hordes of people swarmed the sidewalks, moving as one. The limousine, even though it had special government clearance, sat in traffic for hours, inching slowly through the congested streets. Mae began to drift off, eyes growing weary of the same stretch of shops, and she rested her head against her arm, nearly pitch black sky letting her drift slowly off to sleep...
No, she shook herself awake and rubbed her brown eyes. If she fell asleep, who knows what kind of test she might have failed? Maybe this was the entrance exam! She'd have to go back home to Mama and Papa and tell them that she got rejected! No! Mama and Papa's honour would be tarnished! The family name would be ruined! That would be unacceptable! She must stay awake! She must!
Mae spent the rest of the trip pinching herself sternly, hell bent on staying awake and preserving her family's social standing, and focused on practicing her origami, churning out twenty or so paper cranes in her nervousness. They were all eventually torn to shreds by the jostling of the car and the shakiness of her hands.
After an hour, shards of wings and debris of beaks littered the floor, most of which still moved weakly about as if in pain, and the bustling of the city was behind them as the limousine turned on to a relatively quiet, exclusive street. There were no skyscrapers here, only a massive wall that stretched from end to end and a set of golden gates that sat directly in the center. They drove to the gates, the ageless man flashed an ID card to a security guard, had the trunk and interior inspected, and he was subjected to a full body search.
After "security processing", as one of the guards called it, the limousine continued up a winding gravel path, acres of perfect grass and manicured trees went on forever. A tall boy stood by a patch of clover and didn't even flinch as they drove up to him.
"You there," the man barked, stepping out and locking the doors, giving him a stern look, "You're in the Junior Division, aren't you? What are you doing so close to the Elementary Dorms so late at night?"
The boy stepped into the harsh glare of the headlights, revealing a rather weedy teenager with bushy dark hair and brown eyes that were straining to see behind thick spectacles, and he muttered, producing something that looked like a wallet for the man to see, "I'm here because the Elementary Division dorm mother complained that some of the bushes out here were spitting acid. As Misaki-sensei is currently indisposed, the overseeing Administrators found it prudent that the President of the Gardening Club handle the situation instead, lest the damage to the ground lead to a weakness in the school's defenses. There's been more rumors about that Hyuuga kid and his little gang around lately and the Academy would like to eliminate that potential threat to security."
The ageless man studied the wallet, opening it up and shining a strange looking flashlight on it, which emitted a sickly green light, soon handing it back to the boy with a grimace on his face, as though he really wanted to bring in this boy, not play chauffeur for a couple of little girls, "Just get back to your dormitory. I'll be checking that story of yours with the Principals, Mr...?"
"Tanaka Ichiro, sir," he adjusted his glasses slightly and shifted slightly, "I really must be going, sir. My classes will be starting in a few hours. They start earlier in the Junior School Division, you know."
The man let him pass and watched until he was out of sight, only then getting back into the limousine and continuing to drive without another word. But Mae stared back at the place the boy had been.
He looked strangely familiar and even though Tanaka was a rather common name, she was intensely suspicious...
Didn't...didn't she have a brother who was taken as well?
They stayed the night in a spare room on the first floor of the Elementary Division Dormitory. Mae slept on the floor, not wanting to make a worse impression on the creepy girl from the limousine. She hardly got any sleep, between the uncomfortable floor and her musings about her older brother, and spent most of the night tossing and turning.
She had only gotten to know her brother through the infrequent letters that came throughout her childhood. From the time she could hold a pencil, Mae wrote letters to her paper sibling, almost making him a sort of imaginary friend. She only got one or two vague letters back and a single picture of a bespectacled dark haired boy with a sheepish smile, looking awkwardly at the camera. But her mother and father cherished that photograph and put it up on the kitchen wall, where it was surrounded by countless images of Mae growing up, from first step to her last birthday.
'That's right...' she thought, turning onto her side to avoid a well aimed kick from Imai-san that may or may have not been intentional, 'I...I can't ever see Mama or Papa again...'
But as much as she wanted to deny it, this was not the time to be reminiscing. This was a highly competitive, highly exclusive school that had chosen her to be among its ranks. No matter what distractions got in her way, Mae would succeed in making her family proud and prove that she was worthy to be called an "Alice". A healthy start at this school would be essential and a healthy start required a good night's sleep.
Rolling over on her makeshift bed, Mae relaxed and fell asleep almost instantly, after a few more close calls from her roommate's foot.
Mae woke up to her little nest being gently shaken and a soft voice whispering in her ear, "C'mon, sunshine. You don't want to be late for your first day of school, now do you?"
At the words "late" and "school", she jumped up and looked about frantically, muttering feverishly, "Oh no. Oh no. Oh no. Oh no. I can't be late. I cannot be late. I will not be late."
Someone giggled above her and she looked up, finally noticing the tall blonde man (or woman, she really couldn't tell with inner city folk) standing above, beaming at her brightly.
"Don't worry, sweetie," the man sounded assuring, "Narumi-sensei won't let you be late~. Now, I've got your school uniform for you. Why don't you try it on, hmm?"
She stared up at him blankly and took the pile of clothes from the strange man, hurrying over to the adjoining bathroom to change, only returning once her appearance was immaculate.
The uniform may have been a little ugly and loose around her shoulders but it would have to do. Complaints were never an option for a Tanaka.
"Oh, you look so darling," the man giggled again, "Now, your little friend Miss Imai is waiting outside. I insisted that we wait for you but she seemed very impatient and took the liberty of eating your breakfast for you. So, the faster we get to class, the faster you can make friends and share their potato chips, yes?"
Mae only took about half of this information in (mostly the part about the girl eating her food) but nodded anyways, deciding it was best not to question the man's strange behavior. After all, it could be another part of the entrance exam. Allowing herself to be led out by the hand, she shielded her eyes by the sun, marveling silently at the beautiful surroundings. The Imai girl stood at the side of the gravel road, finishing the last bite of a rice ball, and stared coldly at the both of them.
"Alright, let's head off girls!" The strikingly feminine man exclaimed, marching them off towards the school building, just a quarter of a mile or so away, "Now, I don't want to stress you out or anything but " he looked at his watch and smiled nervously, "We have about a minute before class starts so I suggest we sprint. I sure hope you brought your running shoes, my little ones!"
By the time all three of them got to the school building, the bell had already rung and Mae was worn out, depending on the man (who had turned out to be Narumi-sensei) to drag both Imai-san (who had quit about halfway through) and herself the rest of the way through the hallways. Finally, after two flights of stairs and a couple of pit stops for Narumi-sensei to catch his breath, they came upon a door labeled: "Elementary Division Class: 2-B" and were urged up on their feet with some reluctance.
"Here we are," the teacher winked at them brightly, "Good old Class 2-B, yes? Now, be sure to mind the rules and make a lot of friends, okay? That's all you have to do to be accepted into the Academy."
Mae shuddered. Friends?
Ichiro Tanaka sat in the back of the classroom, face scrunching up in frustration as he agonized over a particularly difficult equation, and was tapped on the shoulder.
"Hey, Tanaka," the boy next to him whispered, probably wanting to get HIS hard earned answers to the quiz, "I heard that there's some kids that just got into the Elementary Division. That's pretty rare, especially right on the first day of term, right? You know the two of 'em that just got in last night? Anyways, one of them is Imai's sister. Never thought he actually had parents, huh? Tomoe-san still believes that he was hatched from an egg. But that's not the point. The point is that one of 'em, their name's Tanaka Mae. Weird coincidence, yeah? From what I've heard from Lina-chan, she's nothing special, just another runt with some stupid Alice. That Imai kid's the one to watch. Just thought you wanted to know, Tanaka."
The equation was forgotten for a minute as he lowered his voice enough to growl a short reply, "If you don't zip that black hole you have for a mouth, Sato-sensei will think I'm helping you cheat... And if she doesn't skin you alive...I WILL. Understand?"
The boy turned away a little shakily, whispering to a couple of his thuggish friends about what "that weird Tanaka kid" was threatening him with now, and the matter was settled.
Ichiro moved back to his quiz, finishing it off with a flourish of his pen. The fatigue of the previous night lay heavily on him. Those bushes had turned out to be quite the devil to subdue, even with his highly-trained Alice. There were burn marks up and down his arms, covered by the long sleeves of his school jacket and a thin layer of bandages. Proper medical attention was hard to come by these days, even for a three-star Alice like himself.
"Pencils down!" Sato-sensei, an overweight woman in her late sixties croaked, rapping her desk with a long and - as much of the class knew from experience - painful ruler, "Heads up! Papers to the fffffrrrrroooonnnnntttttt!"
He wanted to bunch up his test in pure frustration and throw it at the idiot that distracted him. It was all HIS fault that he couldn't finish that last problem. It had absolutely nothing to do with the fact that he'd been up all night or that he'd barely had time to get in that last three hours of mandatory studying. Ichiro resolved to remember this incident. Revenge was best served cold after all, and what better revenge than that boy's girlfriend getting a bouquet of fire-breathing snap dragons for White Day. Perfection.
As he reached for the paper from the girl behind him, he couldn't help but think about what the boy had said. Mae Tanaka? His sister? Ichiro honestly hoped that his parents weren't stupid enough to fall for the scholarship offer AGAIN. But maybe it wasn't his parents' decision. Maybe...it was Mae's.
The bell rang to signal the end of the period.
There were classes to attend, papers to turn in, classmates to ignore. And so the thought of his sister fell out of his mind and took a swan dive into his subconscious.
When Mae first walked into the classroom, she was instantly aware of two things. One, the small man hiding behind the front desk and crying was to be their teacher. Two, it would take all of her strength not to join him.
Balls of paper, pencils, and crudely worded insults flew through the air. A gaggle of children her age were sprawled across their desks, lying on the floor, or performing tricks while floating in mid-air. A few sat silently at their desks in the back, but those well-behaved children were far and few between - separated from her by a sea of pint-sized delinquents. It was bedlam, like falling into a depressed English teacher's version of Carroll's Wonderland.
The man behind the desk whimpered as they entered and stood before his desk in quiet appraisal. He let out a blubbering sound but eventually poked his head up to face his class.
"C-Class... C-C-Class...," the man's voice was barely above a whisper but it carried through the room a little ways, "W-W-We have some new stu-stah-students..."
The children in the front rows, the only ones who could hear the teacher, looked up and poked at their neighbors. The news spread like a plague, and soon everyone in class was looking at the two girls, their words hushed and their eyes cold and calculating in the way only children's eyes can be.
There was a long pause, and the teacher raised his head a little further above the desk and raised his voice ever so slightly - emboldened by their sudden attention.
"Yes, w-w-well. These two young lah-lay-ladies are the newest additions to class 1-B. Please wel-well-welcome them and be-"
A ball of paper landed a direct hit on his forehead, leaving a nasty welt. Whomever had thrown it had quite the arm. The man sunk back below the edge of the desk again and began to mumble to himself mournfully.
Once any semblance of authority had retreated, the students of class 1-B returned to their previous merry-making as if there had never been any interruption.
Mae stared fearfully out into the abyss that was the classroom. There was no direction, no order, no rules, no nothing. She felt the room contract around her like the belly of some giant snake. No rules, no order, no direction, no nothing. Nothing. Nothing.
"Over here!"
She looked over to the corner of the classroom from which the voice had come from, which was hard over the din that the children were making. A short boy with soft eyes and thick glasses waved her over. She looked around for the other girl but she was no where to be found. Well, you had to leave some men behind. Taking the only life-preserver that had been offered to her in this whole ordeal, Mae rushed over to the boy's side and sat when he motioned for her to so.
"H-Hello. I'm the Class Representative. That's what most people call me anyways. Pleased you m-meet you, Miss...?"
The boy's voice wavered and fell as he spoke, which didn't do much to make Mae think that he had it as together as she would have liked for a first ally, but you had to take life as it came to you - just like Father always said.
"I'm Tanaka Mae."
She gave a short little bow of her head in her chair and he gave an awkward little bow back.
"Can I call you Mae-san?"
"Sure. I'll just call you Class Representative then."
There was a long and pregnant pause, filled only by the cursing match that was going on in the back of the class and the giggling of groups of girls. The boy suddenly ducked and a pencil went whizzing over his head, impaling itself in the front wall of the class room.
He sat back up, a little flushed, and said, "Don't mind the rest of the class. I s-swear they're n-nice people, just a little hard to get along with at first."
Mae gave him a thin smile and nodded. She'd have to take his word on that.