"So, Makino, how much did you pay him to act like your boyfriend? Must have been quite a lot," hissed a girl spitefully, leaning forward to whisper in Ruki's ear.

            Ruki grit her teeth, not taking her eyes off the Math teacher in the front of the room. Her grip on the gel pen she was using to take notes tightened until the plastic casing turned white from the stress. Must not kill, must not maim, must not kill, must not maim…

            "I mean," the girl – some bratty underling of Lang's, she couldn't remember the name – continued, leaning forward again, "Why else would he have agreed to spend time in your company? It's not like you're ever pleasant enough that people want to spend time with you."

            Encouraged by the snickering of those close enough to hear the 'conversation', she went on. "Do you want so bad to fit in with us, that you want to try and pretend to have a boyfriend too? It'll never work, you know, because…"

            The Math teacher turned back to the blackboard.

            Immediately, Ruki gave the girl a backhanded jab, followed by an elbow that unerringly found its way to the girl's twice-done-over nose. The girl collapsed to her desk, moaning in pain. Blood leaked out from between the hands she held clasped to her face.

            "Hinako-sensei?" Ruki said in her most innocent-school-girl tone of voice as she raised a hand. "I think the heat caused Mya-san's nose to start bleeding!" Hah, remembered her name in time.  She gave a sympathetic glance over her shoulder. "I think someone ought to take her to the infirmary."

            "Why, I do believe you are right," Miss Hinako said in surprise, bustling over as she adjusted her round-framed spectacles. She bent over Mya's desk, clucking over the girl. "Ruki-san, would you be so kind as to escort Mya to the infirmary? Since you were the first one to see her."

            "Of course, Hinako-sensei," Ruki said respectfully. She got to her feet, taking Mya's arm and helping her to the doorway. As the classroom door shut behind them, Ruki dropped Mya's arm as if it had been red-hot.

            "Oh don't give me that look," she said in disgust as she saw the venomous glare Mya's eyes – over the hand she still held over her nose – gave her. "I could have hit you really hard, you know – broke your nose instead of just made it bleed. Now c'mon."

            She settled back in her seat a few minutes later, and glanced around. "Anyone else want to make a crack about me?" she said, lowly enough to be unheard by the teacher but loud enough for everyone else to have heard her.

            Complete and utter silence was the answer.

***

            "I don't appreciate your viciously assaulting one of my friends," Yana said angrily, slamming her hand down on the surface of the lunch-table. Behind the petite beauty stood the group of her friends, all similarly glowering at Ruki. Mya was noticeably absent, having been sent home from school with her nose covered in layers of gauze.

            Ruki snorted mentally. She hadn't hit Mya that hard – it wasn't the actual injury that was making the other girl cry, it was the knowledge of a ruined nose-job.

            "Friend? Don't you mean lackey?" Ruki asked dryly, not lifting her eyes from the exquisitely-prepared bento her grandmother had made her. She took an insultingly casual bite of rice.

            Yana's eyes narrowed and she clenched the hand currently splayed on top of Ruki's table into a fist.

            "Listen, Makino…"

            "Why should I? In all the excruciatingly long years I've known you, you have never once said anything worth the neurons I would waste remembering it. I don't think you have the necessary IQ to think up something I would want to remember. So, anything you say to me would be a waste of your time, and mine, since I'm not going to pay attention to you anyway." The entire time during her contemptuous speech, Ruki had not once looked up from her lunch. Now she did, in the midst of the shocked silence that had followed. "What, are you still here?"

            Yana's eyes had gone from narrowed to completely bugged-out. She was Yana Lang! NO ONE, not the teachers, not her friends, not her parents, not her agent, talked to her like that! Not even Makino, who had been born rude and had only gotten worse with time, had ever talked to her like that.

            "You little bitch!" she hissed with considerable venom, rearing her hand back for an open-handed slap. However, her wrist was caught before she could make contact with Ruki's face. She tried futilely to twist her hand from Ruki's surprisingly strong grip.

            "Let go! What, just because you have a boyfriend now, you think you can prance around school without worries? He'll take care of you? Well, I'll have you know…" Yana was about to go on about the multitude of suitors she had ready to defend her honor, but Ruki's tightening of her grasp choked the words into a half-shriek of pain.

            "You know, you picked a really wrong day, and a really wrong insult, to mess with me."

            And with that, Ruki used her free hand to gather up her bento and smash its remaining contents onto Yana's head.

***

            Ruki sat quietly in detention, rifling through her deck of Digimon cards rather than doing the homework she had been assigned. However, the teacher assigned to proctor this period of detention was as blind as a bat and going deaf, to boot, so she wasn't really worried.

            She thought back to that lunch period. Unlike her altercation with Mya during Maths, too many people had seen her give Yana a new, katsudon-scented hairdo to let this skate. Besides which, she had thought she was going easy on the snotty little (untranslatable) but she must have been a little angrier than she thought – she'd left fingerprint bruises on Yana's wrist.

            So, here she was, in detention. Luckily, her mother hadn't been home and the school had called her grandmother instead. Seiko would at least hear Ruki's side of the story before launching into the 'Please try to get along with your classmates, or at least not injure them, they are humans too' lecture. Her mother might have just gotten hysterical.

            Ruki sighed and thumbed the edge of a well-worn Agumon rookie card. She'd won this one off Takato some years ago and she…

            Oh hell. She'd forgotten to call him about the change of plans. And she'd had to surrender her cellphone at the start of detention.

            Guess he'll just have to wait for me.

***

            "Are you…sure about this, Yana-sama?" carefully asked one of Yana's clique.

            "Of course I am," snapped the newly-showered, newly-shampooed, newly-changed Yana. "You heard the boy tell Makino where they were supposed to meet, ne? And since thanks to Makino's brutality and stupidity, she's stuck in detention, the boy will be alone. Perfect chance for some payback."
            "…how?"

            Yana stopped and stared at the hapless one who had asked the question. When she replied, her voice was full of incredulity that anyone could miss the point.

            "We steal her boyfriend, duh."

***

AN: Supposed to post this up on 04/29 (my birthday! Yay! ^_^) But had to rewrite an entire section. Much happier with the end-result, though. The first was (shiver) really bad.

Thanks to everyone who reviewed! Here are some replies to the questions…

ClassicCowboy: heh, I like the choices. Maybe we'll see some of them in the future…

Takato: (hopefully) Really?

Ruki: Obviously, Cyber is talking about the first choice only.

FusionBlaster: Who's the Big Man? Sorry, just curious. ^_^ Thanks for the nice encouraging comments!

Neverwhere: Yay! Rukato Forever! ;D And now I'm really on-edge for The Paths Between, especially since The Lost Years seem to be winding down towards the climax and end.

And yes, the Smallville references are deliberate. (grins) Annoys my bro something much, too. Chloe/Clark! Chlark!

AnT: Takato's OOCness will be addressed in further chapters. Although it is fun to write him like that, I know he isn't really. Though, (shrug) who knows, right? Still has some years before he's grown…And, I was really flattered by your comparison to Daneel Rush. ;) His stories are intense. Wish I could spin out epic-plot like that…

SerpentTreize: Thanks for your nice comments! And yes, Ranma is fun to insert, isn't it? ^_^ I'll see what I can do about a cameo. As for Takato's OOCness, I'll repeat what I said to AnT -  wait and see. I do have an explanation.