---

Typically, Nana tried not to get caught. If she got caught, she'd get reported, teachers would get involved and when teachers got involved, parents got involved and God so help her if she wanted to be in the same room as her mother, even if there was a teacher in with them. So, as to avoid parental confrontation, Nana did her best to be a troublemaker, but not get caught.

As it was, the tiny girl was bad at it. She was found out and reprimanded half the time, the smell of tobacco on her skin and the sour speech she spoke was a telltale sign to mostteachers that this one was a troublemaker. Today was no different, a fight during lunch by the cafeteria landing her straight to the nurses, and afterwards, as the day ended, detention.

Yes, Nana planned on skipping detention, yet here she was, walking down the hallway with a teacher behind her, metaphorical leash tight around her neck. Her arm throbbed, freshly bandaged yet already seeing hints of red. The fight got a bit intense, and Nana would be pissed of the other kid didnt get in detention as well. The teacher opened the door, pushing the young teen in with a grunt, Nana fighting back the urge to spit in his face.

Looking at the empty science lab, she asked, "The fuck? Where's everyone?"
"The other kid's still in the nurse," the teacher said, pointing to a seat- universal sign for 'take a seat'. "He'll have detention some other day. Another punk's joining you here today- try not to pick a fight."
Nana scratched the bandaid on her cheek as she sat down, muttering a cliche, "No promises," as the teacher placed a slip of paper in front of her seat. Disciplinary Essay. She's pretty much rehashed the same one the last fourteen times, and today would be no different.

She'd already started to reach in her skirt pockets for a pen when the sound of the door opening caught her attention, her eyes lifting in curiousity.

Kenta clicked his tongue gently against the roof of his mouth, the small noise enough to distract him from the class he was in. It was something along the lines of mathematics. Kenta was a bit distracted with other issues. Such as the detention he had shortly following. He bit the bottom of his lip gently, idly curious as to whether or not detentions were something that showed up on his record. He frowned, fingers running through the blonde hair gifted to him by his foreigner mother. Kenta was an odd thing, a man with blonde hair and blue eyes but fluent in Japanese with a Japanese birth father. He almost had no traits of his Japanese father in him, instead being a specimen of the Caucasian race. The lip chewing continued as he finally realized the class was ending. He gave a small frown and allowed himself a brief look back at what caused him to suddenly be reprimanded.

---A few hours previous---

“H-hey, stop that!” Kenta shouted, running over to the wall that was currently being defaced with long flowing graffiti. Kenta stormed up to the hoodlum, who surprisingly, was actually wearing a hood. Kenta’s jaw locked and he pulled himself up to his full height, looking more like a man and less like a student as he did so in order to try and scare the graffiti artist.

The hood just grinned and laughed “you’re Masanori, I know not to be afraid of you.” He suddenly had a glint of malice in his eyes “Hey Kenta buddy, hold this please?” With that he pressed the spray can in to Masanori’s hands and grinned “later.”

Kenta simply looked at the can, a confused look on his face. A loud noise sounded out behind him.

“MASANORI!”

Kenta spun and looked at the can, everything slowly clicked together. Kenta simply sighed.

----Now---

Kenta’s hand trembled gently as he reached for the detention door. He was afraid of what was going to be on the other side. A room full of delinquents? Maybe he was the only rule breaker today? The room was fairly quiet. He pushed the door open and walked in, a deep breather shuddering in his chest “U-uhm…this is the detention room right?” his fingers ran through his hair before he tore his eyes up from the floor toward the teacher and the one other student in the room. She was small, slight. He gave a small smile. She didn’t seem like a delinquent. The teacher merely huffed an answer and pointed him at the slip of paper. A disciplinary essay. Kenta simply nodded, grabbing the sheet and walking towards one of the desks.

Nana's eyes glanced up to see a giant- a pink faced, blond haired giant- at the door. Her eyes narrowed at his stutter before focusing once more on fishing a pen out of her skirt- she sense no danger from him. Probably just some scrub who was caught at the wrong place at the wrong time. As ink quickly formed the characters of her name on the paper, however, Nana's eyes couldn't help but glance up at the large teen heading towards her. No way was he that big without a bit of exercise. Did he fight? Who'd he fight? Her eyes scanned for scars or wounds or bandages and turned up with nothing.

Maybe she was overthinking it, she thought, looking back down on her paper and reading over the statement that she'd read before a million times. Blah blah blah, explain what you did wrong, blah blah, how will you correct your actions blah. Disciplinary papers, more like 'light slap on the wrist' papers. She groaned inwardly at the terrible joke, fighting the urge to stab herself with the pen. God her jokes were getting bad- she needed a smoke.

At the sound of metal scraping against tile, Nana's eyes glanced back upwards, just in time to catch the teacher getting up from his seat. The two made eye contact, and the man explained, "Gotta drop some papers off- do not cause trouble." Despite there being two people in the room, the old fart's eyes narrowed mostly at Nana, who responded with a nonchalant shrug and a glance to the side. Just like that, the man left, and before Nana could get up and bolt, she heard the sound of the lock clicking.

Well, fuck.

Lying down on the desk and deciding filling the paper out was dumb, her leg reached out from under her table, kicking at the seat in front of her. "Oi, brat," she called out before straightening herself, reaching into her pocket to pull out a pack of cigarettes. Flipping it open, she slid one out and switched the pack with a light, struggling to start it. As she pressed the stick of tobacco to her lips, she continued, "What'd a big guy like you end up in a small place like this?"- the spark started, and Nana's cigarette lit- "Brawn like you, shoulda just KO'd the teacher that caught you."

Kenta sighed gently once more, slipping quickly into the desk as he felt the two sets of eyes that remained in the room watch his progress. He looked around, taking stock of the teacher and the other student that he was about to share the next hour or so with. His eyes worked from the typical black hair that Kenta had come to realize long ago was the norm, to the thin hands and fingers to the slight body. He looked at the bandage on her arm and raised an eyebrow slowly. Maybe she was a delinquent. Kenta chewed at his bottom lip again. His eyes quickly took stock of her, before fixating on the teacher. He sat straight and pulled a pen from his bag, eyes quickly moving from the two other denizens of the room to the paper upon his desk.

The pen scratched away at the paper, ink forming characters of his name and the beginning of the simple paper. ‘what did I do wrong?’ Kenta thought ‘I guess I was just stuck trying to stop some graffiti and no one would believe me’ the blonde teen wrote as he thought before a scraping sound cut him from the simple monotony of the writing. The teacher was leaving. The girl quickly took advantage of the situation by laying out and stopping her paper. Kenta once more raised an eyebrow and simply watched, folding arms behind his head and taking stock of the situation as the girl lit up a smoke and asked him a simple question.

“Because that would be breaking the rules...and...I don’t do violence” he said, leaning back and coughing gently as the acrid curls of smoke invaded his nostrils. He never had smoked but couldn't think of a reason someone would want something that smelled like that in their mouth. He looked her over and gave a small smirk “so, how did a little girl like you end up here then hmm?” he asked quickly, the sarcasm sounding weird in his voice but he figured it was apt for the situation.

An instinctive reply, Nana found herself scoffing at the blonde's reason, smoke curling off her lips. "Don't do violence," she repeated mockingly, sure that he was pulling her leg before deciding to get up, "Suuuure, pretty boy." She started her way to the small window in the room, opening it slightly to let the smoke out and allowing the smallest of breezes in. The small girl took another slow drag before turning, the other person in the room calling her attention once more.

"So, how did a little girl like you end up here then hmm?”

The sound of sarcasm seemed rush and foreign, and before she could help herself, Nana found herself laughing in surprise. It was cute, almost, but mostly fucking hilarious. "Oh, oh man," said the girl, letting loose a few more giggles before taking another drag, making her way towards the kid. She figured that was a joke, too, and opted for not answering it, instead taking the seat in front of him, seating herself so that she straddled the back. "Haven't seen you around before..."- she used her free hand and flipped his paper, reading his name- "Masanori. How'd a big guy like you lay down so low, eh? Don't tell me you were actually avoiding me?"

"Pretty boy?" Kenta raised an eyebrow at the comment. He never really took stock in appearances and never really deemed himself pretty. A small frown worked its way across his pale lips. The sarcasm was simply laughed at. Kenta supposed it did sound funny to his own ears. The giggles from the girl that was seemingly his only company in this room was cute. Though the smoking made him think less so. His pen scribbled absently across the page, writing simple answers as he watched the girl move. He ran his fingers through his blonde hair, tousling it slowly. His eyebrows suddenly furrowed as she straddled the chair in front of him. The smoke curling from her lips pulled outside by the open window. This was something else. He felt almost intimidated.

"Haven't seen you around before...Masanori. How'd a big guy like you lay down so low, eh? Don't tell me you were actually avoiding me?"

Kenta just simply smiled at the question. " How am I supposed to avoid someone I don't know?" He placed his arms behind his head and leant backwards. He had no clue who she was in all honesty. He had always kind of been 'quiet' and pretty straight laced. This girl, smoking on school grounds and comfortable in detention was something he was unaccustomed to. He was almost interested. Almost.

The sound of breath being exhaled was followed with smoke leaving the small girl's nose, her eyes tracing over the paper she'd turned over. At the sound of Masanori's reply, Nana allowed her eyes to glance upward, raising a curious brow. Someone he didn't know? Surely he'd heard of her- almost everyone else had, given her reputation. In fact, all you had to do was place her in the middle of the hallway and watch as the river of students parted, like water rushing around a rock. Then again, she thought to herself as she tapped her hand at the side of the table, the ashes falling on the ground, Maybe they just do that because I look like a bad kid. The thought made her giggle inwardly, remembering when she was seen more as an innocent bystander rather than an instigator.

Snapping herself out of her thoughts, Nana turned her attention back to the blonde, commenting a muffled, "This paper's begging for a rewrite," her dainty fingers pulling the cigarette out of her mouth- she didn't even remember putting it back in. "Your handwriting's cute, but a reason like that isn't good enough for the big guys- you need to sound sappier." Taking his pen, Nana scribbled several ):'s on the paper, emphasizing each frown with a, "Saying 'no one will believe me' at your age to people their age, they definitely won't believe you."

Finishing a row of frowny emoticons, she took a final drag of her cigarette, turning to the side and letting the smoke brush off her chapped lips while she crushed the finished cigarette on the desk. Resting her bandaged arm on the desk, she propped her unbruised cheek on it, her now free arm rising to greet the blonde with a handshake- an American and rather fitting greeting, given his choice of hair.
"Nanase Mio, resident troublemaker, pleased to meet you."

Kenta watched as the simple answers he had given were crossed out and critiqued by what he had now realized was a girl that was used to being in the room. He raised an eyebrow at the frowning faces that were scrawled across his paper “well...I don’t think that was called for” he said softly, his lips turning into a small pout as he looked back up at the girl that was now criticising his answers “they may not believe me but it’s the truth” he muttered under his breath as he continued to watch the smoking girl. He scratched the back of his head, always thinking as to what other people made of him. He never really was an ‘eyesore’ but children were mean to someone that wasn’t conforming to their ideas of what was normal. He had dealt with that for a good portion of his life and once more found himself wondering what this girl was thinking and what her automatic preconceived notions were of him.

She offered her hand and her name in a very american way of greeting. She already had assumed the boy was not a native of Japan. A usual mistake Kenta had come across. He took her hand in his and shook “trouble maker?” he mused gently as his ears pricked up gently. He could hear hissing. Bubbling. An acrid scent that was previously hidden by the smoke of Nanase’s filled his nose. He suddenly turned to see a bubbling beaker set above a burner. Kenta’s eyes grew wide as he immediately recognized what was about to happen. Jumping quickly over the table, he tackled Nanase to the ground “sorry bout this” he grunted as he pressed her to the ground. The shattering of glass came first, then a loud rupturing noise. Kenta could feel the heat and a sharp pain just over his shoulder blade. Kenta grunted before pushing up off the ground and sat on the floor. He look to Nanase “Uh...I didn’t grab anything inappropriate just then did I?” he winced gently “could...you also check my back...I think some glass hit me…”