I just realized that I forgot to say happy birthday to Renji yesterday *sobs*

I'm sorry Renji, I love you! Happy belated birthday!

Anyways, I don't own Bleach, or any of the multiple references below. And there are many.

Walking into high school was almost like walking into a whole new world. Bellerose wasn't anything like he'd seen before. Sure, he'd been to Ichigo's school, but that had been different. There were way more people here, for one, and of so many different ethnicities that Renji couldn't even begin to count them all. Suddenly feeling very disoriented, Renji paused for a moment, trying to regain his bearings.

After a moment of dizzying confusion, Renji noticed one thing. All of the students were staring at him. He was used to that too, in the human world, but it was normally because he was dressed weird, or because he was with Yumichika, Ikkaku or Rangiku, or, more likely, all three of them. Being stared at when he wasn't, to his knowledge, doing anything out of the ordinary, was an experience that he didn't want to repeat. Quickly he escaped into the office, where a kind looking woman looked up and smiled at him.

"I'm Renji," he started, almost saying Abarai, but then catching himself. "Kuchiki." It sounded strange, coming out of his mouth, but oddly appealing. Renji Kuchiki. He could live with it.

"Yes," the woman smiled. "Here's your schedule," she handed a sheet of paper to him, and he stared at it. The schedule was even more confusing than the school. "Bradley volunteered to show you around the school, so your schedule is the exact same as his. He should be here soon."

"Alright," Renji agreed. He leaned against the wall and shut his eyes. He was sure that he couldn't sleep with perfect posture, like Byakuya could, but he had fallen asleep leaning against things enough to know that he was pretty good at it. The only setback was that everybody knew that he was asleep. Too soon Bradley showed up, and upon looking into the other boy's eyes- they were both the same height, Renji knew one thing for sure. Bradley hated him. And he hated Bradley.

This made the rest of the day a living hell. Bradley was smart, and he thought that he was better than everybody else. By lunchtime, the two of them had exchanged harsh words more than once, and Renji refused to sit by him, and instead looked for the nicest looking people that he could find. They happened to be a fairly large group of people at a table. They were all laughing, and none of them were wearing skinny jeans. Actually, only two of them were wearing jeans at all, and those happened to be baggy, worn, and definitely not acid washed.

After the morning, Renji had learned that the girls were basically ranked by how tight their jeans were- the tighter the better, and the boys were ranked by how 'tough' they were. Almost everybody wore jeans or too short skirts, and it made absolutely no sense! How was it comfortable? Some of the girls looked as though they wouldn't be able to feel their feet at the end of the day. That was probably why they were so mean. Their legs hurt.

Renji had never been shy, but he felt a sort of reluctance to approach the group. They seemed tight, as though they had all known each other since elementary, and outsiders rarely fit into groups like that. Still, his group was like that, and they let outsiders in all the time, although… the outsiders always had to buy them all drinks. It would never hurt to try, however, and Renji approached the group warily.

Before he could open his mouth to speak, there was a shout from the table.

"Hey, it's the new guy!" this was said by an aboriginal girl with long black hair and tanned skin.

"Come, sit," called another girl, this one wearing a hat with GRYFFINDOR written across it in large letters. There was some shuffling, and as if by magic, a seat opened up for him in between the girl with the GRYFFINDOR hat and another girl with short, spiky brown hair and shirt that said 'the many moods of Spock' on it. Underneath were a whole bunch of pictures of the same person, with the exact same expression. Renji didn't get it, but then, he didn't get the things on most of the T-shirts worn by the members of the group.

"I'm Gwen," the girl with the GRYFFINDOR hat said.

"I'm Renji," Renji replied, startled by the enthusiastic group. Soon introductions rang out through the group, and Renji had troubles keeping them straight.

"Jess," the aboriginal girl called, raising a hand in greeting.

Brady was a with green hair. Beside him was Sean, who had black hair with hot pink bangs. Both boys wore shirts that said Portal on them, whatever that meant. Bren was the girl next to him. Beside her were Mel and Tara. The three of them seemed to be debating something of significant importance, but all that Renji caught was 'well obviously Tris pwns all. She can manipulate the weather! It doesn't get any more kickass than that!" and 'she can ride around on cyclones! There's no way that she'd ever be beat by anybody. Ever.' It was all over Renji's head, and he zoned out.

"Nate's the one with the Beiber hair," Bren told him, tearing her attention away from the argument long enough to point this out.

"I don't have Beiber hair!" Nate protested. "It's called surfer hair."

"We're not anywhere near an ocean dumbass," Gwen replied.

"It's Beiber hair," Tara agreed.

"Yeah." Mel added. "Remember the little seveners who thought you were Justin Beiber when we were in grade nine? That was the best."

"That was funny," an energetic little girl named Chrys added.

"I missed it," an even smaller, slightly less energetic girl named Grace whined. "You should've filmed it!"

"Dude," a boy named Noah interupted. "It's fucking Beiber hair. If you don't like it, get a haircut!"

"And stop whining," the girl sitting next to Noah- her name was Ash, added.

"You're so mean to me," Nate complained.

"You're a jerk." Bren replied.

"I am not a jerk!"

"You groped me!" Bren retorted.

"And me!" Tara added.

"In my defence, my eyes were shut."

"You stole my lunch!" a boy named Seb complained.

"I was hungry."

"You nearly broke my leg!" Gwen pointed out.

"That was an accident!"

Others added their complaints, and Nate wisely shut up. Renji watched all this with growing amusement. He was right. They were tight. And some of these incidents did date back to elementary school.

The group of friends was based off of my group at school but all of the names have been changed. Prizes if you can figure out what Bren, Tara and Mel were arguing about. Extra prizes if you can guess which one is me... What are the prizes? Anything within reason. Obviously I can't give you your own little Toshiro who will do whatever you ask of him. However, I can write a commission, poem, dedicate a chapter to you, etc. You choose XD

Love and hugs,

-Stormy

PS I know that I said that Byakuya's talk with the teacher would happen this chapter but... I think my brain may explode sometime soon. So it's next chapter.