NOTE: This takes place before Aya-chan’s accident, and Ran’s 14 making Aya about 12. This starts on Ran’s first day of high school (hooray for Ran, eh?). Anyways, Yuki Nakata, Mana Kotoku and Akira Shirai belong to me! Hahahaa!!!! MINE! But ^_^ if you would like to use them, just ask! And um, for anybody who goes "Ran is totally OOC!", remember this is BEFORE the accident, so he must have be semi-normal. Okay? ^-^

Pink Graduation

Chapter 01: P|-|33|2 T|-|3 T4C0!

The day was nearly over, the schoolgirl rush gone home, when the door chimed again, making Ran and the other occupants of the shop look up. Weiss turned as a bouquet of lilies fell to the ground, looking at their leader in surprise. The red head had shock etched over his wonderfully defined features, disbelief ringing against the rims of his violet eyes.

"Hey Ran, " one of the customers said, tucking locks of bright, neon blue hair behind his ears. "It’s been a long time…Nearly three years." He smiled sadly, black painted lips rolling upwards.

"It has…" Ran trailed off and looked away before adding in a somewhat stretched voice: "Yuki." The name and the sight caused memories hidden even deeper in Ran to stir, refusing to be ignored for a moment longer…

~*~

Ran Fujimiya hated high school and class hadn’t even started yet. He hated the stupid, ignorant, self-centered popular class, he hated the stares his hair got him in the hall and most of all, he hated the slutty, skanky cheerleaders watching him like a pack of vultures. He was presently watching the people of his homeroom when a rather flamboyant figure walked into the room.

His hair was a very dark blue, nearly black, and spiked in the oddest way. His chin-length bangs were cut unevenly and flowed about freely, while the rest of it was gelled back like vertical flames of blue fire. His skin was pale, with tints of make up masquerading as midnight sky around his eyes and staining his flush, flower-petal soft lips. He was short, with a smaller build than most guys his age, wearing a knee-length silver coat that flashed moonlight with ruddy crimson swirls curling down the arms from the shoulders. Under this was a tight black turtleneck made of pleather with silver buckles running up the center of the front, this was tucked into a pair of dead rose colored raver pants that billowed out around his platform combat boots. His face was sharply formed, regal and elegant, definitely male but with a certain type of prettiness that couldn’t be described. He scanned the room with eyes that were totally abyss black, there was no white, and they had to be contacts.

Lips twisted in a scowl, he headed towards the back of the room and sat one seat to Ran’s left, right next to the wall. He looked at Ran and snarled. Ran narrowed his abyss-like violet eyes and barked back. The boy’s painted lips curled into a smirk that was quickly transformed into a feral grin when another figure managed to force their way through the blockage of popularity leeches nattering about some new style of dress.

He had a tall, lanky build, black hair dyed with fading streaks of blonde that had turned a soft caramel color, cut so it was barely chin-length to give background to his cocoa brown eyes. His skin was a mix of tan and pale, lean, muscular body clad in a long, floor-sweeping black dress shirt with silver buttons that stopped at about his waist, the arms shaped like bells to flare of his pair of spiked bracelets. His pants were dark, dark red and made of plastic, clinging to his skin to only show off in crimson when light struck the surface. These were tucked into a pair of scruffed black boots, which, oddly enough, had rainbow laces. His face was formed in a boyishly cute way, attractive and formed, yet still holding that big-cheeked look. He took one look at the boy dressed similarly to him and walked into the back of the room, sliding into the seat between the boy and Ran.

"Hey Mana," He said, throwing his muscular, but still gangly limbs all over.

"Where’s Akira?" the first boy, Mana, asked.

The second boy’s face turned into a mockingly angry look as he said, "No ‘hey Yuki, hows it goin?’ for me?"

Mana snorted. "You can fuck a donkey for all I care."

"Well, screw you too!" Yuki exclaimed. "And Akira e-mailed me just before I left. Woke up late."

Just after he said this, the door allowed another semi-gothic, semi-insane student to enter. The third, and last, had neon pink hair that just barely reached her shoulders, gelled down to form a sort of semi-erected umbrella of hair around her head and pair of stormy-sky violet/gray eyes. Her skin was snowy white and could nearly be lost amid her clothing. Robing her upper body was a pure white shirt that reached his thighs and had laces from the chest up, the sleeves suddenly bursting out at the elbows in extra fabric that nearly hid her thin fingers, which were encased in a pair of white gloves. Her trim, petite waist, was wrapped in a long, pure white sash that hung down past her knees and partially obscured the chalky, nylon mini-skirt she was wearing, over a pair of white pantyhose which were tucked into ivory heeled boots. She was beautiful, in a delicate, tender way with a small, soft mouth that one expected a tiny, yet elegant voice to emerge from.

She immediately headed towards the back and Ran moved a seat over, allowing her to sit next to her friends.

"Thank you," she said quietly.

"Hey," Yuki said as she sat down.

~Lunch~

Ran was sitting at a shaded table by himself, carefully eating the bits of cafeteria food he guessed we’re edible and dead. A shout alerted him and he looked up, finding Akira trying desperately to get a sketchbook from one of the male popularity leeches of the highest rank – football jock. The red head’s eyes narrowed when he noticed said jock was about three times Akira’s size in width and two heads taller than she was. Yuki was swearing at him, trying to push through the rest of the football team to get at him. Mana was having similar trouble, while Akira tried to snatch her notebook back. The jock laughed at one of the pictures and shoved her away, launching her into a puddle of mud that completely ruined her white attire. Ran felt something awful and wicked coil inside him and he stood before swiftly making his way across the lunch court.

He easily dodged between the crowd with his slender, but muscular form and grabbed the notebook from the jock’s hand. The boy turned around and was promptly given a bloody nose, stumbling backwards with a shouted curse. The lunch monitors had finally arrived and the rest of the team ran off.

"All five of you better be here after school for detention," the principal said, an almost sadistic acid dripping from his voice. "For the whole week. Now grab your things and follow me." They complied silently, though Yuki’s face was twisted in a horrible look of anger. He, Ran, Mana and Akira were taken to the detention room while the popularity leech was turned towards the nurse’s office. They took seats in the completely empty room and were left alone as Principle Takashakay slammed the door behind him.

Akira turned to Ran and said in a quiet, unsure voice: "Thank you."

"Welcome," the red head responded in a slightly gentle tone, different from his usual even voice.

"This is bullshit," Yuki snarled as he kicked a chair a few feet.

"We’re at school remember? What’s more, this is Hana High, world’s largest preppy hellhole," Mana responded. He looked at Akira, who was inspecting her clothes, a hopeless look on her face, looking like she was about to cry. He stroked her back. "Don’t worry, we’ll get through it. Maybe your parents will let you home study."

"I hate it here," Akira whispered lowly, almost inaudibly. "I hate having to go to school. Everybody here hates me."

"People are stupid and ignorant, they think they are always right even if they don’t want to admit it. You are not afraid to admit this is who you are and that you will not let yourself be tamed by the media. People cannot accept this. Don’t let yourself suffer for other’s stupidity," Ran said quietly, arms folded across his chest, head bowed.

"I like you," Mana stated out of the blue. "Your smart. Names Mana Kotoku."

"Ran Fujimiya," the red head responded.

"I’m his pimp, Yuki Nakata," Yuki posed for a second before Mana thwacked him.

Akira laughed delicately, a sob swimming under the surface of the sound. She said quietly, "I’m Akira Shirai, and in case you can’t tell, I’m a boy."

Ran blinked suddenly and asked, "is that why he stole your sketchbook?" Akira nodded sadly in response.

"Gah!" Yuki kicked another chair. "This is fucking ridiculous!"

"Dude, we’re all pissed, but we’re not all slamming things around. Knock it the fuck off," Mana growled.

Yuki glared at him and said in a voice that borderlined a hiss: "He didn’t even let Akira go to the office to call his parents for a new pair of clothes. He didn’t even let him go to the bathroom to try and wash it off! This is bullshit!"

"Deal with it!" Mana shouted in response.

"No! I’m not going to sit around and take it!" Yuki yelled back. "We’re not all pussies like you!"

"Well the entire world doesn’t fucking revolve around you!" Mana stood up when Yuki did and glared up at the older boy, holding his ground despite the difference in size. There was an angry silence, temper slashing across the air like a blade.

"Would you two knock it off and grow the fuck up?" Ran snapped. "We can’t do anything about our present situation. Why? Because we’re kids and that obviously makes us inferior to adults, because they’ve got the guns at the moment. What should we do? Wait it out, because that’s all we can do."

"He’s right," Akira said quietly. "At the moment, there’s nothing we can do except wait."

"What will we do when we’re done waiting!" Yuki cried, throwing his arms up in exasperation.

Something different uncurled inside Ran, something conniving and intelligent that whispered nameless evil throughout the red head’s entire psyche. He felt his usually calm, collected façade drop when a smirk rolled out across his lips. "We get even."

"Oooooo, I like that idea," Mana said as he propped a hip up on the table in front of Ran. He leaned down and asked in a slutty voice; "how do you propose we do that?" By this time, Yuki was sitting in a chair backward, straddling the back of it with his elbows propped up and hands cupping his chin. Akira was also crowded in, leaning onto the table from the side, left arm on the table and elbow holding his head.

"Well…"