Hillary had reached school with half an hour to spare. After finding her new locker and depositing her bagpack, she headed for the main auditorium, where the fresher's orientation was supposed to take place.

The auditorium was not yet open, making all the freshers stand at its entrance , forcing the students to mingle with the people they were to spend the four years of their highschool, for better or worse. Small clusters were already forming, with people hardly noticing the new comers, already immersed in their talks of how they spent their summer holidays. 

Hillary was not in the mood for small talk. With her draining schedule, she could hardly muster up the energy to idly chat these days. So, she picked a corner for herself to stand and wait out for the orientation to start. 

 She was taken by surprise when a pair of hands enclosed her eyes. She hadn't expected to meet someone she knew from among the crowd. "Boom! Didn't think we would be meeting twice in a day, did you?" asked a fruity voice behind her. She  recognised it immediately. "You!" exclaimed happily. The mysterious hands withdrew as their owner continued to laugh. "You never told me you were going to start high school here! " Hillary asked indignantly. "You never asked me Hil." was Aubrey Sanders witty reply, her smile only widening.

Aubrey Sanders was one of her few friends and a fierce rival from the swimming sphere of her life. She was donning the colours of the blue team, the vest coat and skirt only a shade lighter than the common navy blue blazer with the school emblem.

Hillary wanted to counter her accusation, but she couldn't remember any. Since her impromptu break, she had hardly been participating in discussions, only answering whenever a question was directed to her specifically, and that too with the shortest reply she could come up with. 

Hillary felt slightly guilty for not having paid attention to one of the few people who were proving to be really faithful to her, but Aubrey had already moved on. "If you've got no one to meet, I could very well introduce you to my friends here."Without waiting for a reply, Aubrey grabbed her hand and led her to the cafeteria. 

The cafeteria, which was just beside the auditorium, was buzzing with older students having their breakfasts or freshers who had grown tired of waiting at the lobby. Hillary was steered into a table already occupied by five people. "Hey guys! This is Hillary, as in Hillary Tachibana." Aubrey introduced her.

"The state swimmer that came out of the blue?, pun intended." smiled a extremely long guy with black short hair cut crisply and blond streak in the front. He wore a  basketball cap turned backwards and had a nice tan. He was thinly built, with his shirt hanging loosely to his frame, as though it hadn't even been removed from the hanger. Hillary just waved.

"Nice to meet you, Aub speaks very highly of you." said the quite boy busy in his mobile.

"Aren't you a bit too short for being a swimmer? All swimmers are tall!" bluntly exclaimed the one who obviously looked like the leader of the group with his tall frame, broad shoulders and judgemental eye. He sized her up, his eyes moving up and down her frame. All of his friends were looking at him in surprise and confusion. 

Hillary wasn't really offended, just surprised. He himself hadn't bothered to dress up decently for the occasion with his tossled hair and crumpled uniform. And anyway, she wasn't going to let a stranger ruin her day before it even began. She held his gaze and smiled at him sincerely,  "Being short comes with a wonderful advantage in life. Do you know what that is? People underestimate you. And what's the best part about it all? Being able to wipe that judgemental smirk off their faces forever. So, what do you say for a face off in the swimming pool?"

The guy continued to hold her gaze for a few seconds before he smiled. He really looked handsome when he smiled. "Well, well Aub, the girl's really got some nerve. Face off, huh Hot-head? I have something must better to offer, friendship. So, what do you say?" he asked, stretching his hand out for a handshake.

Everyone around the table smiled broadly   as she stretched out her hand to accept it. Realising that their previous talk might have been a test or initiation of some sort, Hillary felt quite elated to have passed it.

Aubrey did the introductions for her. Drew, short for Andrew Walters, was a state level basketball player, the boy who loved cracking punned jokes. The quite and polite boy Noah Augustus, and their self-proclaimed leader Luke Morales.

The other two girls introduced themselves to be Aarushi and Ahanaa, a pair of identical twins. They had a distinct Indian-ish features with wheatish-white skin tone, black hair and dark eyes and a warm smile. With the same uniform and hair styles, Hillary found it extremely confusing to distinguish the two. To her reassurance, the others admitted that it had taken them almost a month to be completely confident while differentiating the two of them. It only got more annoying with their habit of interchanging their identities just to put them off. 

As the cafeteria started emptying, they realised that they should better get going with just five minutes remaining before  the fresher's orientation started. Within the short period of time she had spent with them, Hillary felt good. Talking normal stuff and being completely stress free, only bantering and poking fun at each other was new to Hillary after spending majority of her time with the stressed-out blade breakers the last few months. She wouldn't claim to have memorized every detail they had mentioned in the last few minutes, but she did feel a sense of belongingness with them.

"Hope to see more of you from now on, if you're alright with it Miss Tachibana?" politely asked Noah, glancing at her sideways as they walked side by side. Without letting herself have second thoughts, she smiled at him, at all of them. "You guys can call me Hil." she assured. And just like that, she had made her first friends at highschool.

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Max terribly regretted his decision. He should have just gone along from his house, like Ray did, or should have at least ditched Tyson's offer to go with him like Kai did. But he did none of that and was now having doubts whether they would even reach school on time. He could already hear his mom reprimanding him if she got to know of this. "Late on your very first day of school? What were you thinking! You should set a good image for yourself Max.. It's your high school, Max, grow up!" she would tsk in that disappointing tone of hers. He shook his head, they still had a few minutes to be there, he assured himself.

Max was relieved to find out that they still had about ten minutes to spare before the orientation started. Quickly disposing their bags in their lockers, which they were lucky to have found in record time, they rushed to the main auditorium.

The place around the main auditorium was abuzz with mixed chatter, which meant that the orientation hadn't started yet. "Remind me to never come with you if I want to reach somewhere on time." he said, half-glaring sideways at his best friend, Tyson. Tyson only grinned back goofily. "I love you too, Maxy!!'' he said as he thew his arm around the younger boy, "I can't believe we are starting high school together!!" he exclaimed, as though Max hadn't uttered as single word of annoyance about him.

 Max sighed, but it couldn't control the grin spreading on his face either. The two of them went in laughing, believing themselves to be carefree teenagers, besties, starting highschool together, just for a moment.

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"Why the sudden commotion?" asked Aubrey as she tried pushing through the herd of students who seemed to have suddenly appeared out of no where. Some didn't even look like freshers. Andrew, who was the tallest among all of them, stood on his toes to check. His face cracked up into a smile.

"Well, well, looks like the new beyblade champions have finally made themselves free enough to attend school." he said breaking into a grin. "Who is it, Max or Tyson?" asked Aaurushi anxiously. "Both. Seems that they planned to come in together." Drew replied back, returning her smile.

Hillary noticed not all of her new friends were that happy with the Blade Breaker's appearance. Luke and Ahanaa showed visible annoyance at the amount of attention they were receiving whereas Noah just started scrolling down his mobile, indicating polite neutrality.

"Come-on, if we could make it through the doors, the auditorium might be less crowded. Maybe we all could find a place to sit together too." she urged, before turning to Andrew and Aarushi. "And if it's an autograph you want, you are most likely to receive one when they are free of the crowd. Approach them after a few days." she suggested.

Aarushi looked thoughtful at the suggestion before reluctantly nodding in assent whereas Andrew just waved her off. "Nah, I don't want an autograph of that sore loser, just want to steal his cap for old times sake." he replied, looking a little nostalgic.

"What, you knew Tyson?" asked Hillary, who had never heard Tyson mention anyone named Andrew. "Yeah, I did. For a little while though, a few months before he won the national championship and started constantly travelling overseas. We used to beybattle each other every other day. The last time I met him was during his first world championship's celebratory party. I too got busy with baseball after that. We had a running joke those days to steal each others' caps." he said, adjusting his own cap.

Hillary tried imagining Tyson without his iconic cap. She just couldn't form the image in her mind. Tyson valued that cap like hell. Tearing the cap was what had made Tyson snap during his and Kai's beybattle in the hospital. He was never seen without it. Hillary was quite sure that Tyson even sleeps with the cap on. It had become a kind of his personal logo without meaning to be one. "You'll never be able to get it off him. Come-on now, the crowd's already thinning out." she said, before diving into the crowd.

Thankfully, the others did follow her, because she found an entire row empty just a few rows behind the stage. Luke and Aarushi complained about the closeness to the stage, which meant they had to sit through the orientation under the constant monitoring of the teachers, but they finally obliged in the end.

******

Tyson just couldn't stop himself from grinning. It had been such a long time since he had been among such a large group of admirers. His hands shook after signing innumerable autographs, on someone's notebook, on someone's kerchief, etc. The number of selfies he had been clicked in along with Maxy, who just couldn't stop being awkward, only boasted Tyson's 'over-confidence'. This was what he meant by a chilled life, enjoying the spotlight earned through their hard work until the giggling girls came into the picture.

Few of them discreetly flirted with him, a few more did it openly while many just directly asked him for a date. Then, the roles got reversed. He became the stumbling 'red' buffoon who was reassured by them that he looked really cute when he did that to placate his bruised ego while Max became everyone's 'golden' boy, quite literally glowing in the lights with his golden uniform, blonde hair and the golden tan he had acquired during his time in Japan.

The crowd was eventually dispersed off by few of the staff prefects, who couldn't decide if it was their mistake or not for the sudden disruption of order. Maxy did all of the explaining while he kept his head low, quite sure that if he was asked to say something, he would burst out grinning again. Thankfully, Max did convince them enough to let them go back to the orientation program through one of the back doors, not bfore warning them to keep a low profile.

Having sat in the last row, Tyson turned to Max, only to realize that he was wiping away the lipstick marks on his face. Tyson felt equal parts of jealousy and and mortification at the implications as he turned his head away. He turned back to him after a few more minutes, "Wasn't it just amazing?!" He whispered, grinning excitedly.

Sadly, Max did not share his enthusiasm "I only felt caustrophobic, with that many people closing on me. Remind me again to never go with you anywhere. You didn't even help me handle the prefects!" he said, looking slightly annoyed.

"Well, I knew you had it all under control. Anyway, I would have started laughing if I had been asked to speak. That surely wouldn't have helped us, would it have?" he asked, grinning goofily.

Max sighed, " Exactly the reason why I want you to remind me again to never go with you anywhere again. Always getting us into unwanted trouble."

Tyson shot back annoyed now. How was he supposed to know about it beforehand anyway! "Says the person who was flirting with very girl he talked to in the last five minutes."

Max looked exasperated at this, "Tyson, there is something called courtesy. You don't tell a lady who asks you out a direct no. You tell them that since you are new to this place, you'll think about it after settling into a routine."

Tyson wasn't going down so easily "I didn't even know there were that many synonyms to call a girl beautiful. Charming, pretty, cute, lovely, attractive, delightful, what else?"

"You compliment a girl when you meet her the first time or if she approaches you. And all the words I used were safe words, nothing meant to say 'I am interested' but meaning 'just being polite'.

Tyson still didn't understand how one word could have meant the whole sentence but he did shut up, as one of the staff started talking over the mic. The orientation program seemed to have finally started.

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