Blytonbury, southern England.
Year 2019
"Ladies and gentlemen, we have arrived at Blytonbury Station. Please ensure that your baggage are safely secure before disembarking, and mind the gap between the platform and the train when disembarking. Thank you for taking this train. We hope to see you again soon."
Despite the warning given by the announcer mere seconds ago, one of the passengers couldn't help but run out of the train in excitement.
"This is it! I'm finally here! This is so thrilling and exciting!"
Everyone on the platform spared a glance at this Japanese girl who seems to be excited about something, watching her twirling around in place until she collapsed out of dizziness.
"Akko, dear, you don't have to be so excited about it..." Says the girl's mother as she exited the train in an orderly manner.
Akko quickly got back up to her feet. "But I'm so close to Luna Nova, where Shiny Chariot studied!"
"You are probably the only person I know to be so excited about going to a boarding school." Says Akko's father as he dragged the girl's luggage out of the train.
The Kagari family, with their luggage in tow, then made their way out of the train station.
"Alright, let's recap what we've planned..." Mr. Kagari said as he pulled a scrapbook out of his shirt pocket, and went through the checklist written on it. "Akko, you are going to be on your own for the next six months. But for the first seven days, your mother and I will be living in a hotel room in Blytonbury..."
"So the two of you can watch over me for the time being, and I can call you if needed. Right?" Akko finished the rest of the sentence for her father.
"Well, that's just half of it..." Mr. Kagari said. "For the other half, we-"
"For the other half of the plan, we will be touring around Blytonbury as tourists, so we don't have to deal with the hassle of having to come all the way here from Japan, only to go home after just a day." Mrs. Kagari quickly interrupted. It was clear that she made up most of it on the spot, and that Mr. Kagari didn't actually plan it.
But Akko didn't care, as it isn't her business as to what her parents want to do. "So, that's it?"
Mr. Kagari pocketed the scrapbook nervously. "Uh, ye-yes, that's it..."
"By the way, Akko..." Mrs. Kagari then raised a point. "How is your English? You know almost no one in England speaks Japanese..."
Akko raised her right hand and did the peace sign. "Don't worry, I can manage!" She answered with grammatically correct English, albeit still having a noticeable Japanese accent. It's not cringe-worthy, but it is still enough to cause a few passing-by pedestrians to do a double take.
"I'm pretty sure the accent's going to be a problem..." Mr. Kagari pointed out.
...
With everything done, Akko waved goodbye to her parents as she departed with her luggage bag in tow.
The Luna Nova brochure she has came with instructions on how to reach the campus. But as Akko is unfamiliar with the landmarks of Blytonbury, she decided that she should ask the townspeople for directions, just in case.
"Hello, do you know which way is to Luna Nova Witchcraft Academy?"
"Excuse me, can you tell me where I can wait for the bus that goes to Luna Nova?"
"Hi, do you know how to get to Luna Nova?"
Unfortunately for the Japanese girl, nobody could answer her question. The only responses she got are shrugs or "No idea."
And so, Akko sat down on a bench at a park, with the brochure wide open as she tries to get heads and tails of the instructions and map given.
"Is this brochure outdated, or has Luna Nova always been this vague with instructions?" She mumbled to herself as she scrutinized the brochure for details she might have missed.
The instructions given by the brochure said to go to a "Leyline Terminal", which is indicated by a photo and the accompanying map to be an old-looking structure covered with vines and small trees. That leaves Akko wondering where the so-called "Leyline Terminal" could be.
Sighing, Akko takes her eyes off the brochure briefly to complain about the vagueness of the instructions.
That's when she laid her eyes on the small hill a bit of a distance from where she is...
On top of said hill is an old-looking structure covered with vines and small trees, just like the one shown in the brochure.
"Oh. It was right there in such an obvious place. How did I not notice?"
Smiling about having just found the "Leyline Terminal", Akko stood up from the bench and took hold of her luggage before starting to run toward the structure.
Although she didn't get to run very far before having to jump out of the way to avoid getting hit by a...go-kart? Which appeared out of nowhere.
"Hey, Cons, can't this thing go any faster? I though German engineering was much better than this!" One of the passengers is heard saying before the vehicle left the scene as quickly as it came.
Akko blinked, wondering what is up with that go-kart and its passengers...and then groaned as she noticed that her luggage bag was knocked over by the go-kart, damaging it and spilling its contents all over the place.
...
After gathering all the contents of her luggage and tidying up everything (the luggage is thankfully not in too bad of a shape, though she might have to explain to her parents how the zipper and combination lock got ripped apart by the impact with the go-kart), Akko made her way to the small hill where the Leyline Terminal sits on, all while being careful of anything else that might appear out of nowhere.
"What is with those people anyway? They can't possibly be Luna Nova students, can they?" She mumbled to herself while climbing the small hill.
As she reached the top of the small hill, she noticed three girls standing by the Leyline Terminal, each holding broomsticks and wearing what she recognized as the official school uniform of Luna Nova. They seem to be chatting with each other in English.
"So what have the two of you been doing during summer?" One of them, a girl with with short purple hair, asked the other two, presumably her friends. She seems to be holding a smartphone in a way that suggests she is doing a live-stream.
"I spent all summer binge-watching all the movie franchises I could find." Answered the girl with dark blue hair tied into a ponytail. "Star Wars, Star Trek, Back to the Future, Terminator... you name it. Though I was only halfway done with the Marvel Cinematic Universe..."
"And I spent all summer looking for a boyfriend on a dating site~" Answered the blonde girl with twin drill hair.
"Yet you are still single." The purple-haired girl pointed out.
"By the way, Avery," The ponytail girl changed the topic. "have you heard the rumors that a Muggle was enrolled into Luna Nova this semester?"
"No way, a Muggle?" The purple-haired girl, Avery, became surprised. "You sure about this, Mary?"
"That's what I heard..." The ponytail girl, Mary, confirmed. "Apparently she's from Japan...?"
"A Muggle, as in someone without any magic capabilities?" The twin-drill girl wondered. "Why would they let her in...?"
Meanwhile, Akko, who overheard the conversation, knew full well who these girls are talking about. She slowly turned around and tried to sneak away from them.
Although her sneaky behavior immediately caught the attention of the girls.
"You there! What are you doing?" Avery called out to Akko.
Drat. There's no getting out of this now... Akko thought.
The Japanese girl slowly turned back toward the trio. She then nervously raised a hand to wave at them.
"H-hello," Akko greeted them in a fluent but still accented English. "I-I'm a new student at Luna Nova..."
Avery and her friends immediately noticed Akko's Japanese accent. "So the Muggle who enrolled into Luna Nova was you."
"Yeah, I am." Akko answered. "So, this is where we wait for the bus that will take us to Luna Nova?"
There was initially nothing about Akko that Avery and her friends found worth laughing about. But now the Japanese girl just provided it herself.
"Bus? Hahahaha! You really are a Muggle!" The trio laughed in unison.
Akko frowned. She may still not have a full grasp of English, but she knows an insult when she hears one.
"You see these brooms we're carrying?" Avery said as she pointed at her broomstick. "That's because this is a broom stop, and you get to Luna Nova by riding a broom through it."
With that said, Avery and her friends brought their broomsticks to bear. Then...
"Tia Freyle"
Akko watched in amazement as the three girls started flying on their broomsticks.
"And this is how you fly a broom, normie!" Avery said as she and her friends floated away from Akko toward the Leyline Terminal. "See you at Luna Nova! Assuming you can even get there, of course~"
Not impressed by the first three Luna Nova students she met, Akko followed them - leaving behind her luggage bag - into the Leyline Terminal.
As the Japanese girl entered the old-looking structure, she saw Avery and her friends hovering right under a magical portal where the structure's ceiling should be.
Avery herself is holding her smartphone out with the screen facing towards her while her friends are hovering behind her. Apparently, she is doing a live-stream, and the fiasco just now has probably been seen by whoever are watching the stream right now.
"Well, that's it for my video blog today, everyone!" Avery said for her live-stream. For some reason, she donned what sounded like a very stereotypical Canadian accent (even though her accent is otherwise normal) for her live-stream. "I would like to continue, but had to end it right here since there are no receptions inside a Leyline. These are my friends, Mary Robinson, from the UK-"
"Keep calm, and carry on~" Mary greeted for the live-stream.
"-and Blair Streiga, from Italy." Avery introduced her other friend.
"Ciao~" The twin-drill girl, Blair, greeted for the live-stream.
"This is Avery Buckland, signing off. I'll see you all again tomorrow." Avery then capped off the live-stream, right before she and her friends vanished into the portal.
Akko is left standing by herself in the Leyline Terminal.
"What a bunch of jerks!" Akko, angry from being insulted by Avery, cursed in her native language, and tried to vent her anger by punching the wall of the Leyline Terminal.
In the process of doing so, she managed to both knock a small chunk out of the stone structure and hurt her knuckles.
...
This did not go as she initially planned. At all.
Things went off the rails when that go-kart smashed into and broke her luggage bag. Then upon arriving at the Leyline Terminal, she got insulted by a trio of Luna Nova students for being a "Muggle" and mistakenly thinking the Terminal is a bus stop. And then she finds out you need to know how to fly a broom to be able to get to Luna Nova in the first place. And she doesn't even have a broom, never mind the know-how to fly one!
In spite of all those setbacks, Akko didn't come all the way to England only to give up and disappoint her parents. And for god's (which god was it again?) sake, she is going to make it to Luna Nova, whatever it takes!
So here she is, trying to climb up the Leyline Terminal by using the vines and tree roots as stepladders. But man, all those movies, especially that one with the guy called Spider-Man, made climbing tall structures look a lot easier than it actually is (though Spider-Man admittedly has superpowers). It took her half an hour to climb a quarter of what the heroes of the aforementioned movies would've done in a few minutes.
Not helping Akko's case is the fact that her right hand is still sore from punching the stone walls of the Terminal, and it was that very moment that her right hand gave out, causing her to almost fall off and lose all her progress in the climb to reach the portal. Good thing she was able to quickly grab a vine with her left hand just in time.
"What will mom and dad think of if they saw me like this?" She wondered as she stopped to catch her breath.
Unfortunately, her short breath-catching session is rendered shorter when the vine she is holding on to snapped.
With nothing to support her, the Japanese girl immediately slipped from the thin tree root that her feet could barely get a firm grip on, and fell all the way to the ground, landing with a loud thud.
"Perkele!"
Ouch, that hurts. Good thing she is tougher than most people (a trait that apparently all witches and wizards have, which makes Akko one, so take that, Avery!), or else she'd have broken a few bones and heavily bruised her head at best. But wait, it sounds like she startled someone upon hitting the ground. Was she not alone?
Akko shook her head a bit to clear up the disorientation that came from falling several feet and landing on solid rock. As she opened her eyes, she found herself looking into another pair of eyes. A pair behind large round glasses lens...
Whew, that is a lot to write after a month of hiatus.
Anyway, here's the second chapter of Luna Nova: School For Witches, where Akko gets mocked by Avery, Mary, and Blair (instead of Avery, Hannah, and Barbara), and then meets a certain Finnish cinnamon roll...
You've probably noticed that Akko is 20 years old rather than (roughly) 16 in this story (with her being seven years old in 2006, and then time-skipping to 2019). While I have made everyone around that age in this story, I have a specific reason for applying it to Akko, which I will reveal much later into the story.
Also, Avery's, Mary's, and Blair's last names are totally not my ideas. I saw them in Superevilbadguy's Bats and Brooms: The Luna Nova Fast Pitch Witches, and found the idea to be so interesting that I've decided to incorporate them into this story. That being said, credit where it's due. I also plan on giving all the Background Witches last names, in case you're wondering.
And that's it. With whatever's causing my month-long hiatus IRL having been deal with once and for all, I can get back to making the intended weekly updates for this story, as well as my other ones (providing that Writer's Block doesn't strike me in the meantime).
With that said, I hope you enjoyed the story, and any constructive criticisms are appreciated.
"And remember: a believing heart is your magic..."
Afterword ends here.