I make no excuse save for the fact I've been addicted to Isekai/Villainess stories of late. This is one of my attempts at writing one. Enjoy!

It was a scene most Japanese females would be familiar with if they played games. A villainess being exposed for the vicious woman she is and thrown out, cast of out noble society and treated like an outcast until the end of their days. It was a generic plotline where the 'lesser' house slowly won the heart of the fiance and became the beloved princess of the kingdom or at least a higher noble bloodline.

There was even a chance of being a 'saint' or some long-awaited heroine who saved the world, all while the villainess was reviled for her previous treatment of the heroine.

This is not that kind of story, or at least not what you might think.

The 'villainess' was the lone princess of the Vongola kingdom. The 'prince' was her fiance and he was marrying into the family, not the other way around. Her parents were nice enough, but her father was a fool and her mother followed his lead in almost everything.

She was the dead last in the line of succession, and every last soul believed Princess Sakura was the least likely to become queen and was only good for gathering herbs and carrying on the bloodline.

Her hobby, while odd, was still socially acceptable for nobility considering her bodyguards kept her from any sort of combat related events while she gathered herbs for the Guild.

Everyone looked at the way the Princess began to silently cry, and secretly smirked at her misfortune. After all, she was the 'no-good' princess. She would likely be married off in a political pairing and forgotten about.

She left the academy, still crying. She managed to compose herself while her father handed down what he considered a 'suitable punishment' for not at least trying to keep her betrothed from falling for another woman. And one of a lesser house to boot.

Two days later she was shipped off to a convent...out of sight and out of mind of the noble circles until she could be of use.

And that should have been the end of that story.

Or so the kingdom believed.

Sakura POV

Ditching the guards for a private moment in the bathroom was ridiculously easy. After all, she had never displayed a will of her own and had never attempted to escape any sort of 'order' her father made.

So the idea of her running away never occurred to them.

Taking the small dagger she recently bought with her liquidated jewelry (she always hated those tacky things), she gathered as much of her hair as she could...and sliced through it without hesitation.

The sheer relief to have that mass of hair off her head was indescribable. She made sure to neaten it up as best she could, before taking the small bag she had hidden under the thick dress out.

Inside it different clothes...specifically trousers and a breast-band to bind back her rather frugal chest and better hide her gender. She shoved the dress into the bag and climbed out the window, but not before hiding the evidence of what she had done.

Hiding her remaining hair under a stolen cap, she wandered around the city with a new lease on life.

A single quest for an escort mission to the next town insured her escape. After all, merchants could care less about who they hired so long as they were competent, and she had a valid card from the Guild stating she was an experienced C-rank adventurer.

Even if it still left a bitter taste in her mouth that her father paid the guild to give her that rank without the combat exam. So long as she could ascend the next level on her own merit, she would tolerate it.

Aside from a small issue with goblins, they made it to the next town without any issue.

Sakura couldn't help but grin, since there still wasn't any word of the 'missing princess'. And if she had her way, she'd be well out of the kingdom before the ruse was discovered.

At the guild...

"Says here you're a C rank. Why are you taking such a low-level quest?"

"My father was overly protective and forbid me from doing more than herb-retrieval quests," she replied. "I want to work my way up to some real quests through actual experience, rather than pretend I know what I'm doing and get in over my head."

The man stared at her.

"How many herb-retrieval quests did you do to earn a C rank?" he asked incredulous.

"1,827 of them," she replied deadpan. "Believe me, I made sure to keep count just so I could jump the first time a ranking test was issued. His only stipulation was that I wasn't allowed to take any real quests until I hit C rank, and even then he tried to push escorts on me."

All technically true, though no one would believe that the princess had taken all those damn quests just to earn experience points and discreetly level up while learning as much as she could about the plants she was asked to retrieve.

Limited herbal knowledge was better than none at all, and it was a subject no one tried to turn her away from. She was almost an expert in every plant or herb that could be found in the kingdom and the three surrounding it.

The receptionist gave her an odd look.

"Return with ten goblin ears," he said, stamping the quest. It was such a boring, common quest that he had to say something when he saw her guild ranking.

Ten hours later, she came back looking rather scruffed up...but with twice the amount of ears needed.

"...You only needed ten."

"Some idiot group of rookies who had big mouths but not the skill level to back them up decided to run in my direction when I had already finished mine. Naturally they abandoned me to flee," she said annoyed. "It still counts, right?"

"It still counts, and I'd like you to point out the idiots who pulled that stunt," said the receptionist.

"Oh, I'll deal with it myself. I just want to make it clear how irritated I am that they stuck me with the job of cleaning up their mess," said Sakura darkly.

The receptionist watched as she approached a very familiar pair of headaches. One was a silver haired teen with a massive chip on his shoulder, the other was the happy-go-lucky swordsman that drove the first up the wall because he never seemed to take anything seriously.

He felt a dark twinge of satisfaction as the girl laid into them, and gave both a hard thump on the head.

He never thought the oddball C ranker would have enough skills to kick the silver haired teen's ass for being a brat.

Somehow, it didn't overly surprise Sakura that Hayato's life had been less than pleasant this time around.

He was the bastard son of a noble who had a brief fling with his commoner mother, who died when he was young of an unknown disease. Hayato had been stuck living with his father and his relatives ever since.

He finally had enough of the caustic atmosphere and left, mostly to try and become the retainer of a higher ranked noble or possibly a high up court official. Needless to say his tsundere temper kept him from surviving any official training. That and some of his relatives on his father's side happily sabotaged his attempts or pinned their own screw-ups on him.

His only recourse was the adventurer's guild, which was beholden to no family (officially) and where the only way you would get blamed for messing up was if you partied with someone and the quest ended in a failure.

Which is where his temper once again became a hindrance. The only one 'brave' enough to party up with him was a young swordsman named Takeshi, who was rather relaxed about it all and had grown up hearing stories of adventures from his father.

He was also the heir to a long line of swordsman, and would be considered to have reached a proper mastery once he attained a C-rank from the guild.

Sakura sighed. Hayato's argument with Takeshi had riled up the goblins, and they had no choice but to flee when they started taking major damage.

While Hayato could dish out some decent damage with his spells and potions, his aim left much to be desired. And while Takeshi was scarily efficient with the sword, he was also having to cover for Hayato often enough that he could never make a decent dent in the monsters. And no one was brave enough to partner with them for long without being driven off by Hayato's constant desire to prove himself and Takeshi's far too laid back attitude.

She debated on whether or not to party up with them. As much as she missed their antics, they weren't her Hayato and Takeshi.

For example Hayato never had to suffer the lingering side effect of poison cooking or next to no food. Takeshi learned about swords from an early age and had never sunk into a deadly depression over a broken arm.

Oh Bianchi was still a bad cook, but from what little she gathered it was more of a case of her being like "Akane Tendo" from a rather famous anime series she remembered in her past life that involved curses and water.

She believed she could cook and was a great chef, but in reality was a complete disaster who shouldn't be allowed anywhere near the kitchen and those who knew of her 'skills' opted to be unavailable and ate out whenever they heard she was anywhere near the kitchens.

Seeing the two of them fail yet another quest was almost too painful to watch. If Hayato had kept his temper, they might have managed to pull it off.

It was the pained expression on Hayato's face and the unhappy one on Takeshi's that decided it for her. She couldn't let this travesty continue.

"Room for one more?" asked Sakura calmly. The way their eyes looked at her said volumes.

"We don't need help," said Hayato. She could hear the bitterness in his voice.

"And I don't need help with this quest, but it requires three people and I don't really want to deal with the adults being condescending because of how I attained my rank," she shot back. "Way I figure it, I take two people I know are semi-competent with me to act as back up and to fill the numbers up and share the reward evenly."

That seemed to pacify them.

"What's the quest?"

"There's a retrieval quest for some items taken during a minor goblin attack. It's in an area that requires a semi-decent party of at least three. I can handle the goblins, but I can't get the items and deal with keeping them off my back," she replied. "The reward is decent enough."

Hayato looked at the request. It was basic enough, and she wasn't lying about the difficulty level. Sure, it was a boring D-rank retrieval, but they had been stuck on E-rank quests for months now and every time they tried to do a higher level one, something always happened to wreck it.

He was getting really frustrated with the whole thing. Takeshi wouldn't say it, but he was irritated by it all as well.

The two agreed to party up temporarily, and got geared up.

Sakura knew this was going to be a headache...so she mostly packed the strongest migraine potions she could get her hands on in short order.

It...was worse than she thought. Hayato's distrust of others and the chip on his shoulder made him a pain in the ASS to deal with on a good day. Takeshi tried to mitigate, but his heart wasn't really in it, and he seemed to take things too easy for most experienced adventurers to tolerate.

Sakura sighed.

"Alright, before we go any further I think we need to sit down and have a serious talk about our roles."

"What sort of talk?" said Hayato defensively.

"My name is Sakura, and I specialize in hand to hand combat as well as basic herbal remedies and finding edible plants. I have next to no combat experience and I have a head for managing money," she said bluntly.

Takeshi caught on to what she was trying to do.

"Takeshi, I specialize in swords, fishing and I have a knack with dogs. My dad tried to teach me cooking, but so far he's had no luck."

Hayato paused and was highly reluctant to go along with this, but Takeshi's look convinced him.

"Hayato. I specialize in explosive magic, volatile potions and I'm fairly decent with money. I have some poison resistance, but I'd rather not talk about my family if possible."

"Now that we've properly introduced each other, I think we need to have a serious discussion about who does what before we attempt the retrieval."

"Who nominated you leader?" snapped Hayato. Sakura shut him up with a Look.

"What do you have in mind?" asked Takeshi.

"Hayato is clearly best suited to a long range role. However from what I've seen, his aim is not the best."

Hayato bristled at that.

"And you, Takeshi, spend so much time covering for him when he's throwing them or casting that you let your guard slip. Am I right?"

Takeshi said nothing.

"I want to try something that might seem unusual for our next fight. Specifically I want to use Takeshi's sword in a different way until Hayato's accuracy improves."

Seeing she had their attention.

"Tell me, have either of you heard of a game called 'baseball'?" she asked grinning.

By the end of the quest, Takeshi had a new favorite sport and Hayato was feeling a bit better about his skill level. His potions and spells were genius, but he had a bad habit of missing and thus needed protection. And that had always pissed him off.

The idea of tossing the potions to Takeshi or having a special buff on his sword to reflect spells to their intended target had never occurred to him. And with Sakura there, Takeshi could properly focus on actually FIGHTING rather than defending.

The merchant was beyond pleased with his items back, and Hayato had trouble believing that he finally had enough money to pay for rent without taking what he considered degrading quests to pay the bills.

"How about we celebrate?" suggested Sakura.

Takeshi agreed to the idea wholeheartedly, and dragged them to his dad's restaurant.

"Dad, you won't believe it! We managed to complete a D-rank quest!"

Tsuyoshi looked up and smiled at his son.

"Oh? How did it go?" he asked.

Sakura hid a smile as Takeshi enthusiastically told his dad about the sport she had introduced him to, and how it had helped them defeat the goblins while retrieving the items. Hayato grumbled occasionally, but it was lacking the bite that was normally there.

A few days later, Sakura ran into Takeshi at the request board (Hayato wasn't allowed to pick the quests for certain reasons he refused to elaborate on).

"Want to take another quest together?" he asked, hopeful.

"I would love to."

Takeshi's relieved smile brightened the room in her opinion. It would take a few more quests, but eventually they became a permanent party, with Sakura being the official leader. Mostly because her high rank allowed them to take better quests.