A/N: I'd like to apologize for any mistakes—this was quite a busy week, but I'm determined to try to stick to once a week updates. All of you wonderful readers deserve at least that!

Emma collapsed on the grass, no longer in control of her muscles. Their next meet wasn't until the weekend, so their coach, the hardass he was, had decided to give the whole team a killer workout. They had even had to run stairs, which Emma thought she might hate even worse than hills.

"Remind me why I let you talk me into this?"

Ruby stumbled over herself sitting next to Emma, handing over a water bottle.

"'Cause I just love your company, Rubes," Emma pushed out between breaths. She took a deep swig from the bottle, tracking its travel down her throat. "Also your jumps have raised our team scores like crazy."

Ruby chuckled through her panting as she stole the bottle back. "I knew you only cared about me for my points. Ow, seriously," she moaned, rubbing her sore quads.

Emma grinned. Ruby was the best jumper in the region (long, triple, and high), and she secretly loved it. But she hated working for it. And Emma, having convinced her to join the team their junior year after witnessing a particularly agile escape during one of their weekend escapades, was always culpable for her suffering.

"Don't know why you're blaming me," Emma scoffed, trying to head off the inevitable stiffness by flexing and pointing her toes in front of her. "If you'd only laid off calling him Grumpy we wouldn't have had to do that extra set."

"What! He was!" Ruby proclaimed in mock offense. That extra push had mostly been her fault, but she wasn't about to admit to it. Especially since everyone was going to be sore and grouchy for practice tomorrow. "That man looks like he's never run anywhere in his life and he's the one with a scowl when we're doing lunges?"

"Yeah, yeah," Emma shook her head, not hiding the smile at Ruby's protest. It was a good thing her friend was so personable. "Just stick with Leroy next time. Or maybe you could try 'Coach'. Give him a little respect."

Ruby snorted at that, and Emma had to agree. It was particularly hard to remember Leroy was actually supposed to be in charge when half the girls on the team were taller than him and his predominant personality trait was unthreatening gruffness.

She leant back on her elbows, reveling in the cool ground beneath her back and looking out into the field to catch Tink being thrown one last time at the top of her formation. Their coach, the bumbling and adorable Nova, cheered their efforts and dismissed them with a smile. Emma couldn't help but wonder what that would be like for a change as Tink grabbed her gear and spotting them, jogged over.

"Ow, no, stop running, Tink, even watching it hurts," Ruby plead dramatically, throwing an arm over her eyes as she collapsed fully into the grass and let out a sigh.

Mostly on the ground herself, Emma had to admit that the chill left in the still-spring-thawing earth helped, and between it and the slight winds, it was cool enough that her sweat evaporating actually felt like it was doing the job it was supposed to, sending shivers across her skin.

"Alright, no more running, see?" Tink reassured Ruby, dropping her bag and sitting cross-legged in front of them, perfectly poised despite her practice.

Tilting her head to see that it was, in fact, the case, Ruby flopped over onto her stomach, rotating to face Emma, head in hands.

Tink took one look at her and spoke for the both of them.

"Okay, spill, Swan."

"Yeah, what's going on with this Operation of yours?"

Met with the focused stares of her friends, Emma knew she had gotten herself into another mess altogether. Why had she thought it was a good idea to ask for help from the people who had made the bet to begin with? She pushed herself up awkwardly to sit up fully, hoping that this little game wouldn't get fueled with more intensity.

"I did agree to fill you both in, didn't I."

"Yeah," Tink jumped in, not leaving an inch to let Emma off the hook. "And you were very unhelpfully vague, so hop to it. Details, please," she ordered. Ruby merely bobbed her head as far as it could go with her hands, agreeing with Tink's direct commands.

Emma sighed. There was no getting out of this one. She might as well use what she could from them.

"I may have already approached her…"

Simultaneous gasps prevented her from continuing.

"No way!"

"How did I not hear about this?" Ruby had practically hopped onto her knees with the new information.

"…But it may not have gone over particularly well," Emma finished, cringing at the thought of what had happened in the library. Not her smoothest moment.

Ruby scoffed, the excited hope from before evolving to her much more natural amused sass. "Big surprise there, Swan. I thought you were supposed to be smarter than that."

Emma made a face but offered no response. She should've been smarter. And she definitely should've read Regina better. That alone was enough to make her question things. This girl was throwing her off her game already and she had only been paying attention for a half a day.

"Well, what happened?" Tink asked, her hope much less easily dissuaded.

"You know," Emma blushed, hoping to avoid reliving the moment again. "It's not super important. What is important is the next time, it's gonna work." She felt her excitement grow at the chance to let her friends in on her work, and at the chance it might have of succeeding. "I have a game plan. And it starts tonight. I'm going to do some background research with our yearbooks."

Upon hearing that, Ruby was successfully derailed from asking for the gory details with an approving nod. "Now there's the Emma Swan I know. Do you need our freshman year one?"

"No, I got it from the library."

Ruby's eyes went a little wide at the mention, making the connection of how Emma had found out about her own time there, but Tink was incredibly pleased.

"So that's why you were there! Did you find out why Miss Ruby here keeps sneaking over there for?" She teased, raising her eyebrows at their gregarious friend.

"Hey, are we not focused on my very important plan right now?" Emma rallied, trying to direct Tink's attention away from the secret she had promised to let Ruby share, since her friend did not look up for it at the moment. Ruby seized on the discussion change gratefully, sincerely responding.

"It's definitely a good one, Em. You have to know what you're getting into." She paused for a moment, considering. "You know, I was thinking about it, and if you're really going hard core, you might want to talk to Kathryn," Ruby offered.

Emma was surprised to hear the name.

"David's ex?"

"Yeah," Ruby mulled it over. "I kind of remember her and Regina being pretty close at one point."

"Ooh!" Tink piped up. She had scowled a bit at the obvious library re-direct, but she dropped it entirely at the possibility she could help. "They definitely were at least acquaintances! I remember Kathryn kind of tried to get Regina to join cheer our freshman year."

Surprise wasn't a good enough expression for how Emma felt about that information.

"Regina Mills as a cheerleader?"

"I know," Tink agreed, "I didn't really get it either. But I could ask Kathryn about it at practice tomorrow?"

"Would you?" Emma's hopes were buoyed even further. Yearbooks would have a few things, maybe, but anecdotal evidence would be way more helpful. Especially if she didn't have to look into it herself. "But super spy-like?"

"Do you doubt my abilities? I'll find a way to keep it on the down low." Tink lowered her voice, spreading her hands out in front of her.

"Yeah," Ruby laughed, falling back to the ground. "Do it just like that."

Emma had just settled on top of her bed, pajamas on and yearbooks in front of her in reverse chronological order when she heard the light rapping on her door.

"Come in!"

"Hey, Emma."

Archie's evening sessions kept them from having dinner together as often as he wanted, but no matter what kept both of them busy, he always made a point to check in on her. Emma herself had been surprised at how rapidly his constant check-ins had gone from beyond aggravating to comforting. Mostly it was because he never expected anything from her. Early on, confronted with her sullen or angry "whatevers" more often or not, he had always just wished her a good night. Nowadays, she was much more likely to turn to her foster dad for advice. She figured it probably wasn't a great idea to tell him about her current issue, though.

"Hey, Archie."

"Are you taking a trip down memory lane?" He smiled, indicating the yearbooks in front of her.

"Something like that, yeah." She smiled back, realizing that she probably would get caught up in plenty of her own memories in the course of her investigation.

"Have a good time, then. I'm going to heat up some leftovers—would you like anything?"

"Nah, I'm good, thanks." Emma would have ridiculed the idea of her turning down food even a year ago, but Archie's boyfriend was something of a master chef, and he seemed to want to make fattening her up his pet project. She could still feel the leftovers he had brought over specifically for her pushing on the walls of her stomach. "Tell Gus he's welcome to cook for us anytime."

"I'll be sure to." Archie grinned. "Goodnight, Emma."

"'Night, Archie."

Archie shut her door, departing as softly as he had entered. Emma turned to her first quarry: '96-'97. She hefted the substantial tome onto her lap, running her fingers over the embossed knight on the cover—the middle school's significantly cooler mascot of a dragon was all the more reason she wished she had gotten to come to Storybrooke earlier.

Opening it to the back, she was immediately distracted by the bright purple writing that started "Dear Emma" and took up almost all the space on the back cover. She caught a few of the lines as she went to turn the page:

Slam your body down and wind it all around.

Slam your body down and zigazig ah.

Ruby had transcribed most of the lyrics to "Wannabe" as her signature. Emma shook her head and grinned as she passed over all the HAGS and more sincere notes to find Regina's name in the index. Once she graduated she could spend some quality time with these books, but right now, she had research to do.

Mills, Regina had a decent number of pages listed, and she flipped eagerly to the first one—just her small portrait along with the rest of the junior class. The next was her listing in Honors. The third was her in concert dress with the rest of Honors Orchestra, holding a violin. That was something Emma could use. Regina played violin. And well, if what Emma knew about seating arrangements was in fact accurate. The fourth and fifth were the pages for the writing and general subject tutors, Regina's face partially hidden in the group shots. Emma considered going in for tutoring for a brief moment before she recognized that Regina would see right through it and would not be pleased. And that was it.

Emma shut the book with a sigh. She had already known Regina was smart. But violin was something, and Emma had really been intending to learn from freshman year, so she still had hope left for a big breakthrough.

Moving on to '95-'96, Emma was distracted this time by a very large cartoon of herself that Ruby had drawn with a speech bubble that read "Ruby Lucas is like totally my best friend evahh!" Regina still had her class picture and still was listed in Honors, but this time for orchestra and tutoring, she wasn't in any of the pictures, just listed below as a member. That was even less helpful.

Scowling, Emma closed it and grabbed '96-'97, getting up to put them both back on her bookshelf. She still had her geoscience reading to do, and if this freshman yearbook was going to be as much of a fluke as the first two, she knew that she could easily fall into perusing her friends comments to try to make herself feel better instead of doing her actual work.

She sat down cross-legged on her bed, staring at her final hope.

Okay, that was a little dramatic.

But, she didn't want to have to go looking through the records of the Storybrooke Mirror for scraps, and she didn't want to rely on Tink's questioning of Kathryn. Or Kathryn's supposed knowledge of Regina, considering the girl was pretty high up socially herself, even outside of her boyfriend connections.

Storybrooke High School Yearbook, '94-'95. The year before Emma came to town.

She opened it, headed straight for the index with no outrageous signings to distract her. Mills, Regina had one more page entry than the previous two, which was something, if not terribly promising.

The first two were again her class picture and honors. The third, somewhat surprisingly, was Honors Orchestra again instead of Freshman Orchestra higher up on the page. Granted, she was further back in the seating, harder to spot in the picture, but she was in it. The fourth was tutoring, but not for English since you had to be recommended by a sophomore English teacher, and she was in the photo again. There was something striking about her that Emma couldn't quite put her finger on with the distance and the crowded picture, but she pushed it to the side realizing Regina had two more pages with her name, and Emma had no idea what they could be.

Turning to the fifth, she snorted.

There, in the second picture down on the page was a freshman Regina and a few very geeky boys standing in front of an elaborate chemistry set up. Science Club.

Of course she was a giant nerd. At least that was more like what Emma had expected to deal with, but she wondered what had made Regina stop going. Maybe she had had instincts of self-preservation in the teenaged hierarchy? Not that it would matter. Her participation in science club couldn't have taken her any lower. Emma snagged her math notebook from her nightstand and flipped to her pre-labeled Regina Mills list. She wrote down the names of the boys in the picture. If push came to shove, she could see if any of them could help any. But there was still one page left to go, apparently another club, seeing how close it was to the page she was on.

The first photo on the page was Student Government. Apparently Regina had been on the student council and even managed to be elected Freshman Class Treasurer. Probably because no one else had wanted to run, Emma thought. Yet another activity Regina had stopped doing, though this one in particular was interesting for who she shared the first row of the photo with—Mary Margaret Blanchard, Freshman Class President.

Emma would've guessed that Regina had dropped student government because of her dramatic class president loss. Emma only vaguely remembered her running because of how embarrassingly it had gone and because Mary Margaret had oddly decided not to run again that year. But now, with MM's warning and their clearly having known each other…Emma didn't want to push her friend, but she felt she might have to. She wasn't about to let a mystery like this go.

She wrote down the other board members—interestingly enough Fredrick had been Vice President and Kathryn had been Secretary, which meant that Emma really was going to have to talk to her if she couldn't get through on her own.

Thinking she had found all she could, and it was a decent amount, she was about to turn to see Mary Margaret's other freshman year listings when she noticed something in the very last photo on the page.

It was Regina again. On the edge of the picture, sitting on the lip of the stage, the furthest down the line. Thespians. The school's drama group.

This time, Emma's surprise was quieter. It was another kind of nerd group, sure, but so unlike what she would picture for Regina, someone so closed off. And she didn't have any other page listings to indicate that she had been involved in either of that year's plays, which from Emma's limited understanding of it, was very unusual for someone in the group. But she had run into her in the library in the row containing American drama. Regina had probably actually been working ahead for English, as opposed to Emma's half-assed self-distraction technique, but what if it wasn't just that? What if Regina really loved the theatre?

She studied the picture a moment longer. Regina seemed so much younger. She looked practically the same, features-wise, but there was something softer about her, clear even in the still life of the photo. For some reason, Emma didn't want to write the names from this group down. She wanted to know the story behind her freshman year involvement in this club from Regina herself.

Emma closed the yearbook, completely ignoring investigating what her friends were like as freshmen, and set it atop her other schoolwork. Lying back atop her comforter, she stared at the ceiling, wondering about this mystery girl and if she wasn't a little too invested already.

She would be disregarding that geoscience reading after all.