Hey, sorry I haven't updated sooner, computer needed to be repaired after the graphics card fried. Anyway I hope here is a better version of I think chapters 3/4 of the original. the formatting is a bit all over the place, it transferred weird from the word doc, i'll sort it later hopefully.

The Project.

"This term you are going to complete a project on a historical event or topic of your choice." Mrs Cook, the history teacher, said as she paced to and thro the front of the classroom. "You will divide into pairs or threes and present your project in front of your year in the end of term assembly. Your presentation should include good English – a fair amount of speaking – artwork and location photographs. Make sure it contains all of these! Your projects work will be marked for your end of term grade in English, Geography, Art and History. You have five minutes to get into your groups before I do it for you. Go!"

The classroom went from eerily silent to the loud deafening buzzing of a crowd before the lights go down and the band appears on stage at a concert. Dagger watched as everyone around her hurried across the room, franticly shouting and arguing.

Zidane was leaning over the aisle from his seat next to her, Jess whispering in his ear and motioning with her hand. Beside her the sandy haired boy... Sam was it? ...was leaning forward in his seat to glance around Jess at Zidane. It appeared like they were working together, Dagger sighed, she couldn't count on Zidane saving her this time then.

She stared at the table dismally hoping that the class would settle soon and the teacher would be able to find her a spare place in a team. She traced the pattern on the table with one finger contemplating when to get up and approach the teacher when someone nudged her arm.

"Look lively." Zidane said having sat up in his chair again, "looks like I'm with you."

"What?" Dagger looked up at his surprised, "...I thought you were with Jess and..."

"Sam," Zidane supplied an amused glint in his eyes, "nah. Jess has a crush, best I don't get in their way."

"Oh, okay." Dagger sighed, how did talking come so naturally to some people? What was she to say now exactly? Oh god, he's just started tapping his pencil against the table, he must be so bored being partnered with me. Think of something, anything! "Erm...You said you believed in the Legend?"

Zidane's tapping stopped and he looked at her warily, "...Yeah."

"Well why don't we do something about that or ...something."

"Hmm," he frowned thoughtfully, "What interests you in history?"

"Sorry?"

"What would you like to do a history project about?"

Dagger shrugged with one shoulder, feeling uncomfortable, "I like the Burmecian war and the summoners but I find the Legend the most interesting event."

Zidane raised an eyebrow as though unsure whether to believe her or not before looking away, "Ok then, that's..."

"I will record what each group is doing next lesson. You may go to the library, computer rooms or the study hall to begin planning your project. Please use the plans I have handed out. You may go." Mrs Cooke said cutting through the many conversations.

Zidane motioned with his head for Dagger to follow him as he stood from his chair. He led her though the corridors to the far side of the ground floor. The library was fairly big for a school, certainly bigger than Alexandra's had been which she'd found very surprising.

He led her to a table in a corner where he unceremoniously dumped his bags before approaching the solitary computer nearby. Deciding that hovering behind him would be a terrible thing to do Dagger turned to the aisles of books. With notebook and pen in hand she set out to find any on the myth and write them down in a list for later reference. Zidane joined her shortly after muttering something like "apparently Zidane's an oglop."

Dagger snorted unattractively, blushing red and burying her head in a book, she pretended she hadn't noticed. Zidane grinned.

"Here's maths," Zidane said, "You'll be down there with Jess and Rose. See 'em?"

Dagger nodded, hesitating before slowly making her way further down the corridor, through one set of glass doors and to the classroom the other side.

"Dagger," Jess said, gripping her elbow and guiding her to three seats at the back.

Dagger was more than a little self-conscious once she realised she was practically right back at square one. She shot a surreptitious glance at Jess who was pulling her books out of her bag, she seemed nice and she really was very pretty. Perhaps she should start a conversation?

It turned out that there wasn't really time to talk. Once Mr Raven had entered the classroom it was clear that they were not allowed to talk. There must be absolute silence. She didn't like him much, he'd seemed overly rude to her when she'd told him she was new and didn't have an exercise book. Rarely in her life had she been shouted at.

It was during one of these unbearable silences Zidane had appeared at the doorway. "Mr Ryan, sent to my class on the first day. A new record isn't it." It was more a statement than a question, Dagger noticed. "Take the desk next to miss Rose Crescent..."

"No sir!" Zidane interrupted hurriedly, "I haven't been sent out, my teacher thinks I need a tutor. She thinks I will concentrate more if there's no one around to distract me, she said you would assign the task to someone in your class."

"You've already corrupted the minds of my students. Gilla! You'll be his tutor alright, hold your hand up."

Dagger raised her hand slowly. Zidane nodded, waving to the girls before meeting Dagger's eye and winking.

"So, you're my math tutor, eh?" Zidane grinned at her across their lunch table. They had been sitting in relative silence waiting for his friends to leave the queue and join them. "I don't see how that's supposed to make me concentrate more unless you're domineering, you're far too pretty!" He joked.

Dagger flushed lightly, "E-er..." she stammered as her brain frantically repeated Jess's small conversation to her on the way to lunch. Hope Zidane hasn't made your day too uncomfortable, he's a right flirt! It's best to go with the flow and play along. But before she could think of a response a girl with long, slightly curly honey-blonde hair sat down beside Zidane. "Hey, again. I'm Kerrie; tell me about yourself, Dagger?" She leant across her lunch tray as she opened her juice carton. Her grey eyes lifting to meet Dagger's dull brown shortly after.

"Oh er..." she stopped suddenly watching Zidane wave his hand in front of Kerrie's eyes.

"Oh, hey Zidane." He said in high-pitched imitation of a girl's voice.

Kerrie laughed, "Sorry Zidane."

Taking a deep breath Dagger stepped into the silence. She told them about how her parents were going to leave her in Lindblum and move back to Alexandria in a week, that they had only come with her to help her settle in. When they had asked why she'd moved Dagger reluctantly explained how her grandmother disliked the life she led in Alexandria and had given her parents no choice and little room to argue against her. "My grandmother bought the house here in Lindblum and said I was moving, end of."

"Wow." Kerrie said faintly, "What about you? Won't you miss your friends and home and everything?"

"No... No, not really. I was all up for leaving actually, a new start, you know? I was thinking of coming here for university next school year anyway so it's not much different."

"What were you planning to study at uni?"

"Jewellery design. I just find it so fascinating. Especially when's platinum and blue stones."

"Cool," Zidane said sounding faintly surprised as Jess sat down next to Dagger. "Wow, I'm lucky. Three pretty girls and not another guy in sight."

Jess rolled her eyes as Kerrie nudged him, spilling her orange juice on the table in the process. "Who's your history partner, Kerrie?"

"Alex," she replied distractedly as she wiped the table clear with a serviette. "We're doing Treno's war, his choice."

Dagger spent the rest of the lunch hour listening to the group of friends talk, focusing on what they talked about and how they framed their sentences.

When the bell rang signalling the start to the afternoon registration she stood, following the group through the corridors back to form room. She took up the rear, watching Zidane and Jess whisper and laugh together feeling slightly jealous that she'd never done much of either in her life.

Mrs Bat called for silence and the class took their seats. Dagger felt Zidane keep glancing at her and then away again but showed no reaction until eventually he whispered, "Hey, you alright?"

"Mr Ryan! I asked for silence one more word and you'll be sent to the head!"

"But..." he argued back.

"That is enough, now be quiet."

He opened his mouth to continue his argument before shutting it again and letting it pass. He spent the remainder of registration rubbing his ribs where Dagger had elbowed him.

Ten minutes, one floor and two corridors later Zidane pushed Dagger towards the teacher's desk and headed to the seat that he'd been ordered to go to.

Miss Stevenson waited for the class to fill up and take their seats before she placed Dagger anywhere. Taking a quick glance around Dagger could spot two spare but before she could walk to one the teacher said, "I'm not having that. Marcus there is no way I am letting you sit next to Zidane for the second year in a row. No one makes the same mistake twice. Marcus can you move to sit next to Amillia."

Dagger was surprised that Marcus got up and moved without arguing or even pulling a face, it was only later that she was told that Miss Stevenson was a popular teacher especially with the boys.

"Dagger is it? You can either sit next to Matthew or dare I say it Zidane."

Not knowing who Matthew was or what he was like and feeling incredibly exhausted from all the new people she was meeting she walked over to sit next to Zidane.

"Did your form tutors read out a message this afternoon?"

"No," Marcus shouted out, "Mrs Bat was too busy shouting at Zidane."

Miss Stevenson sighed, "Why am I not surprised? Right, well you have been assigned your history projects and should have all chosen a subject. In these lessons you will be working on your maps and location photographs. Not every lesson will be devoted to your projects so bare in mind that we will also be studying on how to read maps, how landscapes change over time and so on." She moved over to the filing cabinet and opened a draw. "Today you will be looking at location maps for your projects. For instance if you were doing something to do with Lindblum in the last 800 years - this is the folder that you will need." She pulled out a folder, bursting with papers and was far too heavy to hold in just one hand. "Any questions? No? Okay, let's start."

"So should we start with Alexandria?" Dagger asked as she and Zidane were waved over to the filing cabinet by the teacher, "It's where they lived." Zidane shrugged nonchalantly, pulling on Jess's ponytail gently as he passed. "Sure, whatever."

They were pouring over the maps from the 1600s Alexandria folder, Zidane having given Dagger the task of showing him what's changed about her hometown since then, when he asked in a would-be-casual voice, "What was wrong in form?"

"I-I... I was just feeling a little overwhelmed. So many new people, in such a short time and I'm quite shy. It's exhausting." She handed him the map she held just so that she appeared to have something to do. "What were you talking to Jess about by the way?"

He frowned, "When?"

"On the way to form,"

Zidane was silent for a moment before eventually saying, "Oh, I was just teasing her about her crush on Alex."

"Alex?" Dagger couldn't stop the surprise in her voice and when he shot her a curious glance she expanded, "I thought you said she had a crush on Sam."

"I did?"

"Yeah, the project? You didn't want to get in their way?"

"Oh," his frown eased away into his usual smile, "Nah she fancies Alex, Sam's twin brother. Non-identical. Sam's planning on jumping in the shower to give them time alone." He laughed at the confused expression Dagger gave him. "Never mind."

Turning their attention back onto their project they talked about the differences they could see between the modern day city and the seventeenth century one before it was demolished. After all it was common knowledge throughout the world that both Lindblum and Alexandria were destroyed and rebuilt during the reign of Garnet and Zidane. Surprisingly it was long forgotten why.

"Why did you move to Lindblum? I always thought girls preferred to stay with their parents for as long as possible, Sentimental and all that." He glanced over at her, "Was it really as you said?"

"I moved because there was a problem at my old school. My grandmother felt that I needed to get away from my parents as well as the city, so she really did send me here."

"Away from your parents?" He asked no longer even pretending to focus on the map in front of him.

"...They were suffocating. I wasn't allowed out except to school or with them, I wasn't allowed friends over or to call me. Not that I had friends, not with the way my parents were."

"So... so you've never gone out at the weekend, never had friends, never had a date or a boyfriend or gotten drunk, been to the cinema, never been grounded? Well I'll take back the grounded one, must have felt pretty much the same."

"You've done all that?" she asked, surprised.

Zidane nodded, slightly incredulous, "Hon, most kids have done all that. Well I say that, can't say that I've had a boyfriend."

She laughed, "A girlfriend then?"

He faltered, looking away from her. "Not... Not exactly."

"You've never had a ..."

"Shh," he cut her off, "Change of subject."

She shook her head, smiling, "No," than after a while she said, "Why?"

Zidane hesitated then reached out for her arm with his left hand and leaned in to whisper, "Look... I-I..."

"Mr Ryan! What you do with Miss Gilla outside of school is your business but can you keep it out of the classroom please!"

It was only then that they realised how close they were and, flushing red, Dagger watched him drop his hand and sit back up away from her.

"Sorry," he apologised to the teacher quietly.

"What are you two doing then?" She picked up the discarded folder on the desk and sighed, "The myth. The amount of times he interrupted my lessons last year and filling his exercise book with it." She said conspiratorially to Dagger. "So, what about the myth exactly?"

"We want to uncover the truth of it. Cross-referencing all the different versions and aligning them up to historical events should give us some idea of what actually happened. Or a frame to base an idea on at least." Dagger said.

Miss Stevenson nodded, "Sounds like a well formulated plan. So what places are you looking at?"

"Alexandria, Lindblum, Treno..."

"To start with," Zidane continued, "we'll go with the flow after that."

The teacher nodded, "Carry on then," she moved to the next group after scribbling a note onto the folder cover which was then placed in the cabinet where the Alexandria maps were.

"I don't trust her," Zidane said, "last time she wrote a note saying there was a fifty gil prize for whoever returned the papers to her."

"Ah, Mr Ryan late as usual." Mr Crescent, the English teacher said as he turned to face the door. Zidane pulled Dagger into the room behind him. "And your girlfriend?"

Zidane ignored him, "This is Dagger, the new student, sir." He moved off to sit in one of the two spare seats, next to Jess leaving Dagger to follow him over and sit behind him next to Kerrie.

"In English," the teacher began, "you will learn how to put together a captivating opening speech and write your projects texts in a comprehensible and logical way. You will want your project presentation to hold your audience's attention and not bore them to death. Copy these notes down." He turned and began writing on the board, his hand was virtually illegible. The class slowly filled with the soft murmuring of people sitting next to each other talking quietly.

Zidane tired of writing notes after the first quarter of an hour and turned in his seat to talk to Amillia and Dagger behind him.

"Mr Ryan! I understand that you have been deprived of the girls' attention for all of twenty minutes but if those notes aren't completed by the end of the lesson you'll be standing in the corridor for all of the next one, then you will miss the young ladies even more."

Dagger was surprised when; half an hour later, the entire group (Zidane, Jess, Kerrie, Alex, Sam, Martin, Marcus, Rose, Amillia and herself) managed to sit around one large table in art. Then again, looking around, she noticed the class was made up of two huge tables.

They were given the task of building a miniature Lindblum city to practice teamwork as a trial before the project groups began making the models for the projects.

Zidane, Martin and Sam spent most of their time flicking papier- mâché at each other, although after Jess had nudged him Zidane kept an eye on Dagger too. Jess, Kerrie and Amillia had noticed that Marcus had taken a liking to her, which was never a good sign for girls.

Class ended a messy half hour later and after declining the offers from her new friends to walk her home or to hang out that evening she found herself standing outside the school doors. "So... see ya tomorrow?" Zidane asked, turning to face her.

"Yeah," she nodded, "tomorrow."

"I hope ya like it here, c'ya." He turned bounding down the stairs and Dagger found she was smiling to herself. She felt she had found her first friend in a very long time.