Hope's Peak Academy accepted students from all sorts of backgrounds. As long as you were the best in your field, for a teenager anyway, you would get an invitation. The 78th class had this a little better than the other years. Honestly, knowing 30 different languages was way more of an achievement than literally being born, and being the son of a mob boss who followed the law so strictly was far more interesting than being the son of a mob boss. Among the teens who had weird professions for their age, like gambling and nursing, there were the students with talents that many teens could claim to have, except Hope's Peak students would take that talent and become the mascot for anything involving that activity. Sports are the biggest example. There are many teens that are good at sports, but are they good enough to walk into the gymnastic competition before even making a routine? That's the kind of athletic superiority that was to be expected at Hope's Peak, and never going to a single practice follows close behind.

For Leon Kuwata, baseball was to him as breathing is to most people. You never have to focus on it, it takes no effort, and you don't care about it unless you can't do it, not that he was ready to admit that last one any time soon. It was also boring to consciously do for long periods of time. While he may have been invited to Hope's Peak because of his baseball skills, he was looking to change his image. He decided that what he really wanted to be, was a musician. Did he have any music experience? No. But hey, baseball was easy, so why wouldn't music be? Hope's Peak naturally had students that were invited for their musical talent. Of them, Leon could think of two, the Ultimate Musician, and the Ultimate Idol. Who better to give him tips than one of them?

He had tried his luck with the Ultimate Musician, and it was...interesting to say the least. He asked one of his upperclassmen about her, a guy with pink hair, (Leon thought he rocked it) but once he mentioned asking her for help, it got weird. He just kinda stared at him like he was spouting nonsense for a second, so Leon said he was serious. The upperclassman put his hands on his shoulders, looked him in the eye and said "Don't". After seeing the visible trauma on the guy's face, Leon decided to talk to Sayaka instead. He had asked Makoto, bless his soul, to tell her he wanted to talk to her. Sayaka had mixed feelings about his idea.

"Let me get the straight. You actually don't like baseball, you only played because of peer pressure, and you've decided to quit playing entirely. You also decided that your real goal in life is to become the lead singer of a punk rock band. Why?"

"Huh? What do you mean "why"? I never liked baseball in the first place, and I found my true calling. What's so weird about that?"

"How much do you know about the music industry?"

"What does that have to do with anything?"

Sayaka was hiding her annoyance at this point. "If you want to become a musician, you're kind of at the mercy of the industry. You also need bandmates, sponsors, gigs, equipment, and about a thousand other things."

"Well, if you got talent, that stuff will work out in the end, you know? Like, are you in charge of everything?"

"No, but that's not the point! And how do you even know that you'll be good or popular, anyway?

I mean, I know that I can sing, but I'm not just going to walk up to Sakura and be like "Hey, what's up? FIGHT ME." Just because baseball is easy to you, doesn't mean that everything else will just fall into your lap."

Leon, being who he was, did not take this the best. "And what the hell gives you the right to say shit like that? You don't even know anything about me! I just go to you asking for help and you instead criticize me and my dreams."

"Leon, I'm just being realistic here! I'm not saying you can't do it, just that you shouldn't expect success to come to you the moment you have an idea! You just suddenly decided to become a musician, and you think it'll be easy?"

"Hey, I didn't "just suddenly" decide to become a musician. I have a reason, you know?"

"Oh, and what would that be?"

"Well there's this girl, met her at a hair salon, actually, and she totally digs musicians. I don't know her much, but I really want to, you know? If I were a musician, she'd definitely take an interest then, am I right?"

Sayaka just stares at him for a moment. She had no idea what he was going to say, but now she wished he hadn't said anything at all.

"So, what you really meant to say at the beginning of this conversation was "I hate baseball, and how do I pick up chicks?" You could've made this so much easier if you had said that in the first place."

"Yeah, I coulda said that, but same thing anyway. I already decided to get her to go out with me, by becoming a musician!" He declares proudly. At this point, Sayaka realized that Leon had probably never had a normal girlfriend, or he would've realized it sooner.

"Just ask her out."

"What?"

"Ask her out."

"Are you kidding? Her exact words were "I only date musicians", and you want Leon, the baseball player, to ask her out?"

"How do you know she wouldn't "lower" her standards for a student of Hope's Peak? If given the option between a novice musician or an athletic superstar attending the best school in Japan, it's pretty obvious what most girls would choose."

Leon raised his eyebrow, like she was speaking nonsense. This fact clearly hadn't sunk in yet, probably because he still didn't see his talent as actually being worth something. To him, the ease at which baseball came to him made him unable to realize that his skill was unusual. He honestly did not understand how people weren't as good as him, and that was his problem. Sayaka was beginning to realize this too, so she had decided on some opportune ego-stroking. It wasn't that she had a particular liking towards Leon, in fact, she kind of wanted to punch him right now, but there were so few students at Hope's Peak, and no one had an interesting love life. She was mainly trying to set him up because she was bored of not having any cute couples to squeal over. She decided on the perfect way to wrap her argument up.

"Trust me, I know what I'm talking about. After spending years with my idol group, I know what I'm talking about. The girls would bring over their new boyfriends, and once they broke up, we would all comfort the girl affected, and talk about how we knew he was a jerk all along. Moral of the story, I know how to convince girls with very certain standards to go out with a guy I really want them to be dating. Well, we winded up egging around half of those guys' houses, but that's not really the point."

"Wait, so you actually want to help me get a girl to go out with me? Now I need to ask you why."

"Oh, because it would be fun," she said offhandedly. "Guys don't really get it, but meddling in relationships is a lot of fun, especially when they go just the way you want them to. "

"I think I'm better off not understanding."

"Good, I'm glad we agree. Now, where do we start? Ok, tell me everything you know about her."

A/N: I'm pretty sure we all know where this is going XD. I promise this story isn't just "look at the all the ships", but yeah, the fleet is still pretty important. I'll try to balance it out a bit more later on, but for now, I'm starting with one-on-one. I bet you're all wondering where Makoto is, but I'll just say that he'll be in either the next chapter, or the one after that. I really want to do his chapter, but I believe in character equality for all.