NOTE: This chapter ended up being longer than I anticipated. So I split it up into two chapters. Hopefully this will be the only time I do this, but with all of the ideas I have for this story, we'll have to wait and see if I can follow up on that.

Chapter 3-Two Weeks of Preparation (Act I)

Later that same day, Akko was barely able to reserve a quiet study room for herself in Luna Nova's library. Usually, there were fifteen of these rooms stemming off from the library's main area, and six rooms were used at max due to the school's ever shrinking student body. Before, it was common that those who were motivated, but weren't as proficient in magic as others reserved the rooms in order to cram before exams or midterms. However, now there was an incentive for everyone to study as much as possible. Although the headmistress had said that everyone had a clear shot at winning, the same could be said for being a grade-A student at the school as well. If one didn't know what she was doing, she wasn't going to get very far. Some students only reserved the rooms for a day in order to refresh themselves on basic material. Some reserved the rooms for three days in order to give themselves a crash course on everything from the semester thus far. Akko on the other hand, reserved her room for the entire two weeks leading up to the tournament.

The room consisted of a long table stretching horizontally from the main entrance, chairs neatly placed around said table, with a blackboard and chalk on the wall to the right. Akko sat down in one of the chairs, and dumped her notes and books on the table. The first thing on her to do list was to review everything from this semester. After all, if she didn't know what she was doing, how was she going to perfect her magic for "Who You Are"? She walked over to the blackboard, and picked up a thin stick of chalk. Then she began writing her plan for studying every evening after classes in the room for two weeks. The first four days would be committed to reviewing everything. The next ten days would all be used for perfecting her "Who You Are" presentation.

"Alright, the first thing to do is study everything from every class." Akko muttered to herself. She sat back down in her seat and crossed her arms while looking over at her notes. "My classes end at 7:00 PM, and I don't want to stay up too late into the night. Otherwise, I'll do poorly in Professor Finneran's class every morning for two weeks. Maybe four hours would be enough?" The girl leaned back in her chair and looked up at the ceiling. There, something caught her off guard. One of the tiles on the ceiling was slightly cocked out of line with the rest. "Huh? When did that happen?" Akko stood on her chair, and was just able to slide the tile back into place with the very tips of her fingers. She sat back down, and picked up her Magical Linguistics notes. Right before she started reading, she looked back up at the ceiling tile. "I guess it's to be expected when the staff said this is the oldest private study room in Luna Nova." She thought to herself.

. . .

Three days later, Akko was standing in line waiting for lunch. Her head bobbed up and down as she struggled to stay awake.

"Akko!" Lotte yelled in order to snap her friend out of her stupor. "Are you alright?"

"Huh? Oh, yeah I'm fine." Akko muttured in an attempt to convince her friend that she wasn't sleep deprived. Sucy, who was standing along with the two, wasn't buying Akko's answer, and pulled a small mushroom out of her pocket. She quickly stuck it up Akko's nose in order to rejuvenate the nearly unconscious girl. The sensation of having a mushroom shoved inside her left nostril caused Akko to open her eyes. She was conscious of the fact that she was standing in a lunch line, but her posture said otherwise. Akko was slumped against a wall in order to keep herself from falling, and her head was facing the ground. Her legs were trembling, as if they wanted to curl up in a comfy blanket and not move for the rest of time, and her neck felt as if it would cry in pain if it had a mouth to do so. The sleepy girl rubbed her eyes, and slapped her cheeks twice.

"Yo, morning." Sucy said jokingly. When Akko turned to look at Sucy, she realized something was sticking out of her nose, tickling it in the process.

"Oh, gross! Is this one of your mushrooms, Sucy? Why do this to me when I'm about to eat?" Akko asked in a grumpy manner. Lotte reached forward, and stood Akko in a more presentable manner.

"Akko, people are staring at you!" Lotte said. "Stand up straight, and look more awake! You're about to get lunch." Akko stood upright, and yawned as she walked to the stack of trays sitting next to today's special. She collected her lunch from the food available and sat her tray down at her usual table. After blowing the mushroom Sucy stuck up her nose into one of her napkins intended for use after her meal, she threw it into the trash and walked back to her friends.

"Hey, did I faint while standing in the lunch line just now?" Akko asked curiously.

"Yeah.. you did. It looked pretty sad." Lotte responded.

"Sad? How did that look sad?"

"'How', nothing!" Amanda interjected. "This is the worst we've ever seen you!" Right after Amanda spoke, Constanze's stanbot transformed into a small mirror. Constanze handed it to Akko so she would get a look at herself. The tired girl realized she had huge bags under her eyes, and her hair wasn't in the best shape either.

"Oops." Akko remarked. "I guess I do look pretty bad.

"How embarrassing!" Sucy chuckled as she slurped down a spoonful of soup.

"Is your presentation for "Who You Are" coming along though?" Jasminka asked as she opened a small box of chocolates.

"Well, I haven't really started working on that yet. But, I was able to finish reviewing everything from this semester in two days!" Akko celebrated as she held up a peace sign with her hand. The rest of the table looked unamused. After a bit of awkward silence, Akko realized that not one of her friends was excited about her progress. "What?"

"Akko, how much sleep have you gotten in these past two days?" Lotte asked.

"Um.. maybe five hours?" Akko answered shyly while turning her head away from the table in anticipation of her friends' response. The big reaction that she expected however, never came. After waiting for a second or two, Akko looked back at her friends. She was greeted with concerned faces from all of them.

"Seriously?" Amanda asked. "Five hours over two days?" Akko hesitated to respond.

"Y-yeah, is that bad?" Akko asked. Amanda burst out of her chair.

"Hell yeah that's bad!" she yelled at the top of her lungs. "You're basically killing yourself!" As soon as Amanda began to yell, Constanze's Stanbot made wild gestures as well.

"Akko could work herself to death if she keeps up with bad schedule!" Akko herself had a small freak out at this realization.

"Work myself to death?"

"Even an idiot like you should have realized that!" Sucy said.

"But Sucy, you work late making potions!" Akko retorted.

"Yeah? Well I make sure I get the hours of sleep I need so I don't lose my mind! You're completely hopeless, aren't you?"

"I'm not hopeless!" After Akko said that, Jasminka threw a small chocolate wrapper at her. "Hey, Jasminka! That's not very nice-" Right as she finished her sentence, Akko looked over to see Jasminka tearing up.

"Not very nice?" Jasminka asked. Her voice was shaky, obviously trying to hold back tears. "What do you want me to do? Let you do this to yourself without it dawning on you what your repercussions are?" This was the most anyone had seen Jasminka snap at someone. The whole table stopped and stared at the sniffling girl, unable to come up with words to console her. "Don't do this to yourself, Akko." she whimpered. Constanze took to patting Jasminka on the back. Akko's face turned red with embarrassment. She looked down at Jasminka's crumbled up chocolate wrapper, then back at the teary eyed girl.

"Akko, we're just worried about you." Lotte said, looking very concerned. When she heard that and looked around the table again, Akko felt a pit in her stomach.

"I'm….sorry guys." Akko said quietly. The rest of lunch had a very awkward feeling in the air around their table. As they all went about their day, the group of friends hoped that tomorrow wouldn't be the same.

. . .

It had been one week since headmistress Holbrooke announced Luna Nova's magic tournament, and Akko had barely made any progress on what she would present during the first round. She awoke early, but didn't move from her bed immediately. Instead, she took to looking at the bottom of Lotte's bed, which was all she could see immediately upwards from her bottom bunk. It was peaceful. There were tiny birds perched right outside their window, and from their room, it seemed the world was at peace.

All Akko could think about were her friends. She looked over at Sucy, and words about wanting to make her mother proud by proving her independence echoed in her mind. This also made her think about Amanda's speech she gave about wanting to expose her father's business practices in front of everyone to show him that he was using magic to benefit no one but himself. Akko's eyebrows furrowed a bit, yet she was still smiling. She looked up at the bottom of Lotte's bunk, and thought about last night. When she accidentally arrived late from her private study room last night, Akko found a typed letter written on Lotte's "sphere thing" (as she called it) to her parents. The letter had comforting words to her parents. Apparently, multiple, bigger, magic stores were being planned to open up in the few days after the reveal of witches to the mainstream, meaning more competition. The letter ended with Lotte promising her parents that she would win the tournament in order to spread the word about their humble little store. As far as Akko knew, she was the only one other than Lotte who had read that letter. After discovering it, Akko quickly realized that Lotte must have forgotten to send the message, but her curiosity overruled her good conscience. When she finished reading, she scrolled back to the top in order to make it appear as though she went straight to bed. Completely unaware of this situation, Akko was starting to feel a little inconsequential again. Especially when after thinking about Lotte's letter, she remembered how concerned her friends were for her well being.

She felt moronic for staying up late again last night. She had been attempting to cut back on the number of hours she was working on her "Who You Are" presentation. However, she couldn't figure out what to do. She had an idea, but wasn't sure how to execute it. She sighed, and sat up in her bed, scraped the crust out of her eyes, then got out of bed proper. She got dressed, and decided to walk around a bit before going to meet Professor Ursula.

. . .

Akko walked for a good ten minutes, but ended up sitting on the steps facing Luna Nova's main gates. She let out another sigh.

"I wish I hadn't messed up my sleep schedule. Now I can't sleep when I want to." she remarked sadly. She then looked up at the sky, wearing the same furrowed brow she had been for a while now.

"I've only just learned how to fly. Here I thought more spells would just open up to me. But I haven't changed much." she thought to herself. "What's wrong with me?" Suddenly, Akko spotted a tiny object in the sky. After seeing it was fly towards the school for a few seconds, she realized it was her friend, Diana Cavendish! She stood up and started waving.

"HEY! DIANA! DOWN HERE!" Akko yelled in order to get her friend's attention. Diana spotted Akko, and flew down towards her.

"You fool." Diana remarked. "I wanted to fly back in the morning when I had enough energy, but I also didn't want to wake anyone up. Thanks to you, my plan is shot."

"Oh! Was I that loud? Sorry." Akko apologized.

"Huh? Wrong with you? You're a mess!"

"I should ask what happened to you! Where did you disappear to after the headmistress announced the magic tournament?"

"My aunt was informed of the event, and called me home to have a discussion."

"A discussion? This took several days?" Several seconds passed before Diana followed up on Akko's question.

"Don't tell anyone, but My aunt and I realized that this event is the perfect opportunity to reclaim the glory of the Cavendish household."

"Oh! That's good, right?"

"Yes, I suppose it is. But when I expressed interest in participating in the tournament, the entire house burst into an argument over whether me participating in the event would put too much stress on me."

"Too much stress?"

"Yes, everyone doesn't want me to feel like the house's name is on my shoulders alone. I reassured them it didn't but it took several days to convince them." Diana looked away from Akko when she explained her situation. Akko realized that Diana must not have been comfortable with explaining the situation.

"Wow, sorry you had to go through that."

"It's fine, thank you. Though, I'd like to clarify that I do intend to put on a good show for everyone back home."

"That's nice to hear!"

"You on the other hand, Akko, look pretty bad."

"Do I have bags under my eyes?"

"Pretty big ones, yeah. You don't have to tell me anything. You're probably really stressed out about the magic tournament. A lot of our peers no doubt are as well." Silence filled the air for a minute.

"Yeah, I've been staying up as long as I can in order to get ready."

"Well, don't stay up too much. You'll kill yourself."

"Everyone keeps saying that." Akko attempted to laugh in order to deflate the tension in the conversation. Diana wasn't having it. When she realized this, Akko looked down at the ground again.

"Akko." Diana said in a commanding voice. "I'm serious about this. Get some more sleep. Don't forget that this event is just for the school's publicity in order to give witches a good name at the start of this new age." Diana started to walk away, but was stopped seconds later.

"Diana?" Akko asked. "What do you think of this magic tournament?" Diana turned around, and stared at Akko with her trademark stiff posture.

"I think it's a pretty dumb idea."

"Really?"

"Yes. I think a tournament is a cheap way to excite the general public in order to make witches look exciting. I only intend to participate to turn things around for my family name."

"Oh, alright." Akko hung her head low yet again. Diana turned away from Akko as if she was about to continue walking away.

"However, I understand why you're stressing out the way you are." Akko's head perked up in an energetic, yet tired motion. Diana remained facing away from Akko. "Just don't forget that you have friends to fall back on when you're in a pinch." Akko looked back down at the ground, and a few tears fell from her eyes. She could feel a small lump grow in her throat.

"Thank you, Diana." Akko barely whimpered out. Diana continued to walk away, no doubt wanting to take a quick power nap before classes started. Akko's head remained low. She wiped away her tears, and looked upwards. "I'm so stupid!" She thought. "I've been trying to get ready for this tournament by myself, but I've been ignoring my friends. They probably have been willing to help me out this entire time. I was just too blind to see that." Akko's fists tightened with determination, while fresh new tears ran down her face. "I'm not going to be helpless anymore! This tournament will mark a new start for me! Not just as a witch, or a student, but a person as well!"

NOTE: Continued in Chapter 4: Two Weeks of Preparation (Act II)