Hey everybody! I got a couple of requests to continue this, so I shall. This chappie's kinda short, but oh well. The Ending They Deserve will now be a series of oneshots that sort of follow a storyline... mostly... I have no idea what I'm going to do next, but this is the sort of generic back-to-school scene that everyone seems to have. Mine's got a twist, though! :D Also I'm definitely going to have a chapter called On The Night Of The Fire Festival: Reprise. Gee, I wonder what that could be about. ;)

Thanks very much to BlueForestAngelCat, Moon Shadow Magic, InsaneNarutard0111, James Birdsong, AlleluiaElizabeth and AllegroConBrio for reviewing! Also, thank you so much to everyone who favorited this story! I feel special! :3

Disclaimer that I always forget to put in: I don't own Princess Tutu or I wouldn't have to write fanfiction to mess with the storyline. I could just pay the producers a lot of money to give me a Continued Series or whatever. XP

"Class, this is our newest student, Ahiru."

"Newest student…" it felt so weird being called new. Ahiru felt as if she'd gone to Kinkan Academy all her life. (It was almost true, too.)

Ms. Weiss, the new ballet teacher, coughed politely, and Ahiru realized that she should probably be doing a reverénce right about now. She dropped a hurried curtsy, feeling awkward and long-legged in her new yellow practice leotard that Raetsel had bought for her. She didn't look right! She couldn't do this!

"Ahiru-san, what will you be dancing for us?"

This was it. Ahiru had been working on this dance in the studio in secret for a week, but she still didn't feel like she knew it. It was the "Dance of the Little Swans" from Swan Lake, and she really should be doing it with two other people, but obviously that wasn't going to happen at this point.

"I—ah—" she started to say, her stomach dropping to the floor, when she felt a hand on her shoulder.

"She's dancing a pas de deux with me."

"Ah, Fakir-san! Okay. Does the pianist know your music?" Ms. Weiss smiled brightly. She was a bit over-inclined to be cheery, Fakir thought, but then so was Ahiru. He smiled a little without thinking about it.

"Yeah, I talked to him beforehand," he replied, and indeed the pianist did seem to know exactly what to do. He played a few bars of the song, and Ahiru's eyes went wide—that was the song from the Lake of Despair! I guess Fakir thinks I know this better than the Dance of the Little Swans, she thought. I probably do, too. That swan thing is hard.

Ahiru knelt down, closing her eyes. This was it. If she messed this up she'd have to marry Neko-sensei—oh, wait. He'd gone back to being a cat. His kittens had chased her a couple of times, when she was a duck…

The music started again, and for a few seconds Ahiru was nervous. Then she and Fakir were dancing, and she forgot to be. She barely remembered where she was.

Suddenly, it seemed to her, the music stopped. Is it over already? And people were—clapping? How different this was from her first pas de deux in front of the class. She'd danced with Rue in a competition for—well, for Mytho, really, although it was Rue who got him and not Ahiru. She still didn't know why Rue had chosen her, but she did know—or hoped she knew—why Fakir was the first to clap for her…

The two of them bowed, and ran and walked, respectively, to their seats below one of the windows, Ahiru tripping before she got there, of course.

"Baka," Fakir whispered, and Ahiru glowered at him.

"It's not like I did it on purpose or something. Meanie."

Then they both smiled, each knowing the other didn't mean it. It had become almost routine, this banter, a way of showing affection. Most of the time, that is… occasionally Fakir did mean it. In which case Ahiru did, too.

"Ahiru?" Ms. Weiss was saying.

"A-ah, hai!" Ahiru stood to attention, the expression on her face so funny that Fakir couldn't help laughing. She kicked him.

"You will join the advanced class."

Ahiru's eyes were huge. "R-really?! You'd really… oh, thank you so much, sensei!"

"You're welcome. You may sit down."

Ahiru sat down carefully, trying not to spaz out again.

"That hurt," Fakir muttered.

"Sorry! Did I bruise you? Let me see it."

"No, it's fine. Be quiet or you'll get in trouble!"

"Sorry."

"Baka."

"Meanie."

"Ahiru, do you have something you'd like to share with the class?" Ms. Weiss asked sweetly.

"Uh, no. Sorry!"

"Are you going to do this again? You want to get dropped to the probationary class?" Fakir hissed.

"B-but… you're the one who's talking…"

"Shhhh!"

"Then if there are no questions," Ms. Weiss was saying, "we'll take a fifteen-minute break and come back here."

Almost all at once, the class started to chatter. Ahiru scanned the room, looking for her old friends Lilie and Pike. Ah, there they are… she spotted Lilie's familiar blonde pigtails and green eyes. She was chatting with Pike, or at least a girl who looked like her.

"Fakir, I'm going to go talk to Lilie and Pike," she said.

"What did you say?" Fakir shouted. It was getting louder in there.

I thought people were supposed to leave… thought Ahiru, then repeated herself in almost a scream.

"Oh. Okay! I'm not coming!" he yelled back.

She nodded and started walking towards Lilie, who was leaning against the piano and talking to Pike and a girl Ahiru didn't know. The pianist, who'd been a penguin the last time Ahiru saw him, was playing… something she didn't know. It was very dark and had a lot of really loud notes, but at least it was a change from his usual song. Then he stopped, obviously finished, and it suddenly got a lot quieter. Ahiru had almost reached Lilie when the pianist stood up.

"Autor?!" Ahiru blurted out. Since when had he been a penguin? Oh right, he hadn't, he'd probably just taken over for the penguin guy. Or something. She started to walk faster, hoping to find out…. but someone else got to him first.

"Autor, that was amazing!" Lilie squealed in the voice she usually reserved for Ahiru's failings, flinging her arms around his neck.

Er. WHAT? Ahiru stared at the two of them. What was wrong with Lilie? She was acting so…. so… normal!

"Lilie and I are going to Ebine's after school. Do you and Dylan want to come, Pike?" Autor was saying. He's not acting like himself either! Ahiru blinked several times, thinking they might go away and turn into two perfectly normal people that she didn't know. They didn't.

"You two are so cute together," the girl Ahiru didn't know was saying. "I can't believe you only started dating two weeks ago! It feels like you've been together forever, doesn't it?"

"Uh-huh!" Lilie said in that voice, the hearts coming into her eyes. "And he took over being the accompanist for us for me… how cute!" She hugged him again.

What. Is. Wrong. With. Lilie. Ahiru couldn't take any more of this…. this alien Lilie! She turned and started to run towards Fakir. And ended up running into him.

"Watch it!" Fakir said. "You could have hurt yourself, and then where would you be? Not here, that's for sure. Probably in the infirmary with a broken ankle!"

"Fakir! Something's wrong with Lilie!" Ahiru blurted out as soon as he was done talking, barely listening to what he was saying.

"Huh? What do you mean?" Fakir racked his brain to figure out what she could be referring to.

"She's acting—normal!" Ahiru was looking at him as if normal was on the same level as axe murderer. He had to smile. She was so cute sometimes.

Aww, he's so cute when he smiles. Wait, what's he saying? Ahiru thought. Her brain figured out what it had heard: "That's… probably my fault."

"What? Why?"

"I told Autor to talk to her."

"And he listened to you? Whoa."

"He told me later it was an accident, actually. And then he thanked me."

"Something is definitely wrong with those two," Ahiru asserted. "When has Autor ever thanked you for anything?"

"Well, never, but maybe it's just because both of them have finally met someone as strange as they are," Fakir said.

They stared at each other for another minute and then both of them burst out laughing.