The Eds had settled in quite nicely in Japan. They were staying with Konrad, who owned a small house off-campus of Fujimi Academy, which is where the boys would be studying. The school was one of the most super-exclusive in the whole country and Double-D had gotten there on a scholarship deal from his parents. Ed's Dad had transferred to a police branch nearby and had called in a few favors to get his son enrolled. As for Eddy, his older brother Matthew had recently begun working as a teacher there, and despite there still being plenty of bad blood between them, Matthew had pulled some strings to get Eddy a spot in the school lineup.

After the Eds were indoctrinated into Fujimi's halls, Konrad, Rei, and Hisashi took the time to introduce them to their friends. The first they got to know was Konrad's distant cousin and Hisashi's best friend, Takashi Komuro.

At first, Takashi didn't think much of the Eds except for Double-D since he was the most 'sane' of the trio. However, after Eddy and Ed jumped in to help him out in a street fight, he began opening up to the other boys.

Next was Konrad's best friend, Kohta Hirano. The two had first met while learning about firearms under a private security force. Ed had ended up forming a particularly close bond with Kohta after defending him from bullies to the point the lovable oaf officially became Kohta's second best friend besides Konrad.

After that was a childhood friend of Takashi, Saya Takagi, the self-proclaimed smartest girl in school. True to what Rei had jokingly said when the Eds first arrived, it was Eddy who had caught Saya's eye first. The boy had pranked one of the teachers and was making a run for it before crashing into her. As the two began yelling at each other, the teacher Eddy pranked caught up and was about to haul him to the headmaster's office before Saya stopped him, lying by saying Eddy had been with her the whole time.

After the teacher left, Eddy asked why Saya did that for him to which the girl merely smirked and said a single response that made the de-facto leader of the Eds realize he was stuck with her from now on.

"Don't ask questions, SLAVE."

All in all, the Eds were getting used to the new daily norms as students at Fujimi along with their newfound friends. But not even a month and a half into the semester did hijinks inevitably catch up to them.

Konrad and the Eds were walking home from school, trying to think of what clubs they wanted to join before they heard a scream from nearby. Finding a bokken from the Kendo Club lying on the side of the road, the four boys searched the area before finding a small gang of punks cornering three girls from their school.

Seeing one of the girls' uniforms torn painted a pretty clear picture of what was going on. Double-D moved to alert the authorities on his phone while Konrad, Eddy, and Ed snuck up on the punks and jumped them from behind.

Thanks to Konrad's military training, Ed's recent tenures in boxing thanks to his dad, and Eddy's own sneakiness, the trio took down all the thugs with contemptuous ease. After making sure the girls were okay, Ed took off his jacket, which Double-D had thankfully cleaned and washed, and gave it to the one whose uniform had been torn to protect her modesty while Konrad offered shelter at his house.

Konrad's Dad, Lawrence, was visiting that day. After the boys told him the story, he allowed the girls to call their parents, as Double-D had already gotten the police on the line earlier. After Lawrence rounded up the punks to hand over to the police, the girls were soon happily reunited with their families.

Two of the girls, Toshimi Niki and Misuzu Ichijou, were especially grateful to Ed since Toshimi was the one the boy had given his jacket. The girls were inseparable best friends and were seldom seen twenty feet away from each other.

The day after the incident, the boys were being hailed as heroes by the rest of the school. While Eddy, in his usual egotistical way, soaked up whatever praise he could get, the others were more humble. But that's when things got a bit more crazy for the boys.

After giving some follow-up questions to the police, they were intercepted by a reporter named Shota Maresato. Thankfully, he was a very reasonable man, simply asking a few questions of his own and then leaving.

Later, the boys discovered a security camera had caught their heroics. Not only that, but the third and final girl they rescued, Kawamoto Sakura, was the daughter of a prefectural politician, who had publicly expressed gratitude to them for saving his daughter. While Konrad wasn't fond of politics and the Eds, particularly Double-D, didn't like the whole world watching them, a few good things came out of it.

Konrad became part of the disciplinary committee, which he took to like a duck to water. Also, due to his military connections, many of the families of the students at Fujimi had wanted to hire me as a bodyguard for their sons and daughters.

His parents had to intervene with this, particularly his dad, but by the end, Konrad gained special dispensation from the city, prefectural, and national government to act as an on-campus sleeper agent to guard and protect the heirs and heiresses from harm in an emergency. He got a license to carry whatever he needed to protect his classmates and was allowed to keep equipment and weapons under lock and key on school grounds.

Of course, Konrad wasn't going to just be left to his own devices. He was placed under the authority of his father as an honorary agent of the local SOCOM team. Fortunately, his mixed heritage helped with the red tape due to his mother being related to a few politicians herself.

Besides Ed getting the attention of Toshimi and Misuzu, Double-D also attracted the attention of one of Fujimi's most notorious females; Yuuki Miku. The two first met when they accidentally bumped into each other, leading to Double-D apologizing profusely, which surprised Yuuki since most other boys tended to be overly charmed by her natural sultry demeanor.

As if fate was playing a particularly silly joke, the two ended up paired together on a test in a subject Yuuki typically struggled with. Double-D, thanks to his smarts, was able to help guide her through the work, which raised her grades considerably. Soon, the two ended up hooking up, much to the disbelief of just about the entire school.

Eddy was quite jealous but at the same time proud of his sock-hatted friend for scoring a major hottie like Yuuki and he and Ed both playfully teased him relentlessly for the fact.

However, the political side of things soon reared its infamous ugly head. Koichi Shido, one of the teachers at Fujimi High and the head of the Track & Field Team wasn't too fond of the boys. In fact, it was safe to say he hated their guts. Shido was the son of a rather sleazy politician named Ichirou Shido and had tried to get the boys in trouble after the incident.

The whole thing was a slogfest to go through as Shido stood there for an hour sounding like some televangelist, trying to make Konrad give up information on his parents under the guise of showing him the right way to behave, even having the gall to suggest that the boys should have done nothing for those girls and waited for the police to arrive and deal with the punks.

All Eddy did was flip Shido the bird before leaving, Konrad joining soon after, calling the teacher a 'slimeball of the highest order'. Double-D, while far more polite in his words, simply stated that Shido should be ashamed of himself for thinking it is right to just let the innocent suffer when something could be done before he and Ed left as well. Matthew, who had been present as well, couldn't help but laugh and applaud the boys for what they did.

In an act of spite, Shido tried to get the boys expelled, but a quick call to Rei's father, who was the police's Chief Inspector working a case on Shido's dad, put an end to that issue before it could even begin. Konrad's Dad even went in front of the national diet and said in no uncertain terms that attempting to make him reveal military or government secrets would end poorly for any party involved.

However, the biggest surprise of all came from Konrad scoring his own girlfriend; Saeko Busujima, the president of the Kendo Club. She had invited Konrad to her club to thank him for saving three of her members but he waved it off, saying he was only doing what was right.

One thing led to another, starting with Konrad having asked Saeko out for dinner which then spiraled into him meeting her father, Ichigo Busujima, a world-renowned swordmaster descended from a long line of samurai all the way back to the 'warring states' period.

The Eds had gone with Konrad to act as moral support. Needless to say, Mr. Busujima's reputation preceded him greatly. Fortunately, he seemed to take a liking to Konrad and gave his approval to date Saeko. After a few months, the two had become the premiere power couple at Fujimi.

While the Eds weren't privy to all the details, at one point Saeko had requested her father for Konrad to learn the ways of the Busujima Clan. He said yes but had thrown a curveball; he would accept Konrad as a student, but he would then be forbidden to date Saeko because he would not allow any student to date his daughter after an incident that forced him to dismiss a rather lecherous pupil.

At that moment, Konrad had declined Mr. Busujima's offer, stating that Saeko meant more to him than even the chance to study under one of the greatest swordsmen ever. Needless to say, Ichigo was pleased by this answer and not only allowed Konrad to become his student but also gave his blessing to continue dating his daughter.

The Eds wished they could have been there to see it, especially Ed, who always had a taste for romantic stories.

Unfortunately, not everything was sunshine and rainbows. Rei ended up getting held back a year and broke up with Takashi, who she had been dating at the time, without explaining why. Konrad's parents did some digging and managed to uncover that Ichiro Shido had gotten Koichi to do so as a threat toward Mr. Miyamoto, who had been investigating the source of all his dirty money.

Konrad told the Eds and they all wanted to blow the whistle on the case but the Shido Clan had their greasy fingers dipped in various sources, meaning it would be too risky to just go up front and expose their corrupt dealings. The boys could tell Rei was just as torn up about the breakup as Takashi and had started dating Hisashi in an effort to stay close to him in some capacity.

The whole thing was a giant mess, but Konrad's parents kept their ears to the ground for any way to dispose of the Shidos and restore some kids' lives to normal. Fortunately, Eddy managed to secure his friends some protection thanks to his own connection with Saya.

Turns out Saya was the daughter of the prefecture's local "Don", Souichiro Takagi. The man was a hard right-wing nationalist, and so old-fashioned that one would be forgiven for thinking he had time-traveled straight from Japan's medieval era or was a reincarnated Daimio. Eddy was both grateful that Saya had made the offer to have her father's influence shield him and his friends from Shido's machinations and also pants-wetting terrified at the inevitable prospect of ever having to deal with a man of such power.

Thankfully, Saya's mother, Yuriko, was a much more manageable sort. She was an old friend of Konrad's mother from their own high school days. When she learned of her daughter taking Eddy as her "slave", the woman wasted no time in teasing her about finding her soulmate, since she clearly saw that despite Eddy's usual prideful and greedy nature, it was clear deep down that he was seeing Saya for more than just her looks and connections.

All in all, things were going alright for the Eds and their new friends. But change would soon be coming...and the world as they knew it would never be the same.

I mostly took from Way of the Warrior by krazywolve for the lore dumpage in this chapter. Next, we shall begin Z-Day proper with a few surprises in store.