Thank you to everyone who has reviewed so far, especially to those who included constructive criticism and nitpicks. Both of those things are appreciated very much.

Now, a few notes about this chapter; first, in this chappie, I've sort of made the transition from descriptions to dialogue. Azumanga Daioh is an anime that centers around back-and-forth conversation between the characters, so this was my attempt to duplicate that effect. Tell me if I pulled it off, 'kay? Second, yes I am aware that Final Fantasy XII hasn't come out yet; I just needed to use something. Just bear with me on that, alright? Finally, most of the past events described in this fic are drawn from those described in the manga. I've only seen a few episodes of the anime so, if something seems unfamiliar in this story, just assume that it was included in the comic. With that said, please enjoy chapter two!
Chapter Two: Memory Loss

Six pairs of eyes blinked down at Chiyo, their owners too surprised at her last words to do much else.

"Chiyo… is… that my name? And… who are all of you?"

Out of everyone present, Sakaki was the one who was able to believe the events of the past few minutes the least. Chiyo, kindhearted, naïve, intelligent Chiyo, couldn't remember who she was? That was inconceivable! She was way too smart to forget that easily. No! It just couldn't happen…

A snort jolted Sakaki from her thoughts, and, turning, her eyes fell upon Tomo, the short-haired girl obviously trying to suppress the laughter creeping up her throat. After a moment of struggle, she gave way, giggling uncontrollably, much to everyone, especially Chiyo's, confusion.

"Bwahahahaha! That's a good one, Chiyo-chan!" Tomo said, brushing away a tear from her eye, "I mean, I thought I was being clever with that whole 'bucket of water on Yukari's head' thing, but pretending to lose your memory… that's the best April Fool's joke in the world!"

In the next instant, Tomo was sent crashing to the ground courtesy of Yomi, brandishing the enormous bucket as though it was a deadly weapon. "Baka! She's not kidding!"

"Of course she is!" Tomo fought back, rubbing the newly-formed lump on her head pretentiously, "It's April Fool's Day!"

Yomi dropped the bucket and threw her arms up in frustration, looking as though she was about to start foaming at the mouth and strangling her tormenter. "It's not frigging April Fool's Day!"

"Um… what's going on?" Chiyo asked quietly from Sakaki's lap, causing everyone to turn away from the aggravated Yomi and back to the situation at hand.

After a second, Sakaki said, "Chiyo-chan… can you really not remember anything?"

The little girl shook her head, pigtails waving. "No. Nothing, um… what's your name?"

"Sakaki."

"Right. Sakaki." Looking around, Chiyo then inquired, "And… who are they?"

Sakaki pointed at each one as she said their name. "That's Kagura, Osaka, Yomi, Tomo, and…"

"'World Leader'," Yukari said as Sakaki gestured toward her, the sensei's face reflecting great seriousness.

Kagura snorted. "You wish."

Sakaki shook her head, her dark tendrils whapping Chiyo slightly as she did so. "No. That's Yukari. She's our teacher."

"Teacher…" Chiyo whispered, trying to embed the knowledge she'd just obtained into her head, "Teacher…" She then repeated this process with each girl, locking her eyes with theirs, trying to commit every name to memory. "Yomi… Yomi… Kagura… Kagura… Osaka… Osaka… Tomo… To…"

"So, you really don't know who I am?" Tomo said, leaning down so that she was at Chiyo's level.

"Uh-huh."

Tomo placed a hand over her heart and gasped, clearly taken aback. "Th… then you don't remember… your unconditional worship of me!" The hyperactive female gesticulated wildly as she spoke, looking as earnest as she'd ever been. "You don't recall how you used to follow me around wherever I went, saying, 'Tomo! You are my master!' You don't remember how, whenever I strode into the room, you would bow before me, aware of your unworthiness of my presence? You don't…"

CRASH!

A second bump formed on Tomo's head right alongside the first.

"The important thing," Yomi said after she set down the pail and finished glaring at her friend, "Is that we now know that Chiyo-chan's lost her memory."

"So what do we do about that?" Kagura asked.

"Get it back, of course," Yomi declared, "Chiyo-chan is our friend, after all. I'm sure that, if one of us lost our memories, she'd do the same thing."

"Yeah, I suppose you're right," Kagura said, smiling and clenching a fist of determination. "You know what? I say we help get Chiyo-chan to remember!"

"Yeah!" Tomo cried, her fist in the air as well. At this, Osaka threw both of her arms up, too, saying, "Banzai!" as Sakaki nodded along in agreement. Even Yukari seemed to smile down at the ground of friends, approving of their dedication in helping their beloved Chiyo remember everything.

Yomi bowed her head, still grinning herself. "Yeah… let's do it…"

At this point, the final bell rang, signaling the start of homeroom. Yukari turned toward the noise and said, "Okay, you guys go do that. Um… I'm going to go play my video game now…"

"Where the hell do you think you're going?" Yomi asked, any evidence of her former good mood completely gone from her countenance. "Don't you have a class to teach?"

"Some teacher you are," Kagura added, rolling her eyes.

With a grumble, Yukari made her way to the front of the room to take attendance and to (reluctantly) assume the responsibilities of a woman of her profession. But, of course, seeing as she was Yukari, these things often included mocking her students, slacking off, and avoiding answering any questions her pupils would have. However, nothing Yukari did mattered to one person, the young woman who was staring at Chiyo, the little girl, unlike everyone else in class, not having any paper of materials she would need for school out on her desk. Sakaki sighed at her friend's predicament, but, thinking back to her comrades' words, immediately lightened up. Don't worry Chiyo-chan… we'll get your memory back soon…

"In today's class, we will cover parts of speech," Yukari declared at the beginning of English. After three attempted escapes from the classroom to play Final Fantasy XII—two of which were thwarted by Mr. Kimura, who "just so happened" to be in the area at the time—it appeared that the teacher had finally decided to do what her title dictated. She scrawled a sentence on the board—Mary is going to the clothing store—and, turning back toward her class, stated, "There are two subjects in the sentence I've just written. Would someone like to identify them?" A few students raised their hands far above the sea of heads; this was by far one of the easiest questions their professor had asked all year. Scanning each of the children's faces, Yukari settled on one in particular—one who did not have their hand up, one who was instead blinking confusedly at the board…

"Chiyo-chan."

The little girl cocked her head at the sound of her name. "W… what?"

Yukari crossed her arms and smiled in a way that could very well be perceived as evil. "Go on, Chiyo-chan; answer the question. What are the subjects in the sentence?"

The until-recently prodigy made a small noise in the back of her throat and quivered, partly because she had no idea what to say, and partly because the woman at the front of the room was looking at her so strangely. Her moist eyes scanned the foreign words on the board, trying to pick out one that at least seemed correct. However, what with her now-identified retrograde amnesia, she couldn't know for sure, as any knowledge of the English language she had possessed in the past had been wiped away from her brain. "Um… I… um… is one… Mary?" Chiyo closed her eyes, waiting for Yukari to laugh and scold her for an incorrect answer as her peers pointed, cackled, jeered, ridiculed…

But the mockery never came.

Instead, she was met with the sensei's now furious gaze and a growl of frustration. Yukari slammed her hands on the desk in front of her, her eyes narrowed, looking as though she was about to hurdle over the table. "You got it right?" she screeched, her mouth opened so wide, it would do Mr. Kimura's to shame. "You have no memory about English, and you still got it right?"

"E… eh?" Now Chiyo shook even more than before.

"You were supposed to get that wrong," Yukari continued, accusatory finger pointed at the little girl, "So that we could all laugh at you. Don't be so smart next time, you little…"

"Hey," Kagura whispered to her companions nearby, all of whom save Chiyo were tuning out the enraged teacher as best they could, "Isn't the point of English class to get the answers to the teacher's questions right?"

Yomi groaned, blowing her bangs out of her eyes. "It is, but, knowing Yukari, she probably just wanted to torment Chiyo-chan."

"Though I don't blame her too much," Tomo said, a thoughtful finger tapping against her lower lip.

"What the hell does that mean?"

The hyperactive girl shrugged. "You know when you see a row of dominoes and you get the urge to make one fall over, just to see what happens?"

"Uh… no…" Kagura commented as Yomi and Sakaki simultaneously shook their heads. Osaka, however, leaned forward, eyes spread wide, almost as though she was under a spell. "Yeah… yeah…" she murmured, her mouth pulling upwards into a warped smile.

"Yukari just got that same urge," Tomo said, "To torment Chiyo-chan because she lost her memory—just to see what would happen."

"Yeah!" Osaka said, literally bouncing in her seat now. Yomi spared a glance her way, mumbling, "What the hell's gotten into you?"

"But Yukari didn't count on one thing."

It took nearly everyone a moment to place the voice, one they hadn't heard for quite some time; it was Sakaki's.

The big-breasted girl looked down at her desk, flushing at the newfound attention. "Chiyo-chan is… well, Chiyo-chan," she said quietly, suddenly finding the lined paper in front of her very interesting. "Even though her memory's gone, she's still the same person. She can still answer Yukari's problems correctly because her smart personality… it's still there. No bump on the head could ever change Chiyo-chan." The pencil Sakaki clutched suddenly broke in two, and the girl held the splintered pieces, barely even feeling them cut into her skin. Right now, her mind was on Chiyo and what she could possibly do for her, for the friend she cared about so much. "I… I really want to help her… I want her to get her memory back!"

"Sakaki…" Kagura whispered, shocked at the young woman's expression. Normally, by now, the athlete would have suggested that she and Sakaki make getting Chiyo's memory back a competition, but in this moment, had she said anything, she felt nearly certain that Sakaki would have creamed her.

Sakaki looked up at her friends, the blush now gone from her cheeks, a set look in her eyes. "Let's… do that…"

The girls were silent for a moment, quietly agreeing with the tall girl's words. After a moment, Osaka said, "So, where do we start looking?"

"Huh?"

The Osakan shrugged her shoulders, the same clueless look ever-present on her façade. "Well, if Chiyo-chan's 'lost' her memory, we need to find it, right? If she was by the door to the classroom when it went missing, maybe we should start searching there."

Yomi shook her head, about to explain to her friend that she was mistaken, but she promptly shut her mouth before any words had a chance to form themselves. Attempting to make Osaka understand anything more complicated than "two plus two equals four" was typically a lost cause. Instead, she turned to the remaining members of her group and asked, "So, does anyone have a suggestion about what we should do about Chiyo-chan's plight?"

Tomo raised her hand. "Oh, I know!" she said, "Let's hang her out the window upside-down!"

"What the hell is that going to accomplish?"

"It worked for the track meet, didn't it?"

"No… actually it didn't. And even if it did, just hanging someone upside-down isn't going to do anything."

Tomo rolled her eyes. "What are you complaining about? You asked for an idea and I gave you one."

"A crappy one," Yomi pointed out, already completely worn from the past ten second's conversation with Tomo. However, no sooner did she think that her friend had shut up did Tomo say, "Hey, you wanna know what I think?"

"What?" Yomi said. Oh, Kami-sama, what am I getting myself into?

"You know that Chiyo-chan got her amnesia by getting hit on the head by a bucket, right?" Tomo said, leaning forward, speaking with that same tone of voice she had before. Yomi flinched, but didn't say anything. "Well…" Tomo continued, "All we have to do is hit her in the same spot as before and she'll get her memory back!"

Yomi was about to put her friend into a stranglehold when Kagura beat her to the punch. "Are you insane? She won't be any before off than she was before!"

"Oh, and I suppose you've thought of something better?"

"'Course I have!" Kagura declared, crossing her arms and smirking smugly. It wasn't long before that grin began to fade, one finger in the air, trying to think. "Uh… uh…"

"Ah-hah! I knew it! You're empty, aren't you?"

"Will you shut up?"

"No!"

"Argh, you're such a baka!"

"Heh heh… you're one to talk," Tomo said, whipping Kagura into an even bigger frenzy. Yomi watched from the sidelines as the two battled it out, her gaze occasionally flitting to Sakaki, still holding the ruined pencil in her now-white fist, the bubble-headed Osakan crawling underneath a desk in search of something she would not find, and Chiyo, sitting confusedly at her desk. The bespectacled girl groaned, one hand pressed to her forehead in hopes that the touch would cure the headache that had claimed her. This is going to be a lot more difficult than I thought…

...and that's it! End chapter. Please leave a review, and I'll get to work on chapter three as soon as possible!