Gilbert Beilschmidt had made it into Junior year without expulsion. That was a surprise, not only to his parents, his brother, his teachers and his friends, but also to him.

He was, people would often mutter, the sort of person that the terms 'dropout' and 'trouble' were coined for. He held the school's record for most detentions, had been suspended twice, and couldn't go more than two days without getting into a fight or being kicked out of a class.

Gilbert Beilschmidt was, however, very bright. And so for all that he skipped school and slept through classes, when the time for report cards came around, his grades were always practically impeccable.

He wasn't going to assembly on that particular Monday. It was the first one in September and he had considerably more awesome things to do than listen to the start of the year announcements. Instead he and his two 'partners in crime', Francis Bonnefoy and Antonio Fernandez Carriedo, were sitting in the car park eating crisps.

It wasn't a particularly sinister activity. Nor was it illegal. But it was still against school rules. Not that anybody cared. The smokers that hung out around there at the same time had heard too much of Gilbert's reputation to consider starting something.

"A new year, a new generation of freshmen to introduce to l'amour…"

Gilbert rolled his eyes. Francis was obsessed with the idea of spreading l'amour, probably due to his French parents. Gilbert personally thought that the blond would be much better off if he worked on spreading something useful like Awesome.

"Don't you think freshmen are a bit iyoung/i now?" Antonio said, but Francis just snorted.

"Age is no barrier for love! That is why you can still pursue your sophomoric… Italian."

Gilbert snorted. Even Francis, king of compliments, couldn't think of anything nice to say about Antonio's crush, an aggressive Italian boy in the year below who had rejected the Spaniard violently on several occasions. Antonio just had strange taste, especially since apparently the boy's 'much cuter' younger brother was starting at the school this year.

"First period is starting soon. Are we going?"

Gilbert paused, pulling out his timetable from his bag. "Fuck yeah!"

Because apparently, for the first time in history, first thing on a Monday morning could be good. Because he had German with 'Old Fritz', the only teacher in the school who was nearly as Awesome as he was. Not to mention the fact that he'd been speaking German fluently for the same amount of time he'd been speaking English and therefore had no need pay any attention in the lesson. So he tossed the empty crisp packet to the ground and pulled his rucksack onto his shoulders and led the way back over to the main buildings, splitting off from his cohorts as they entered the languages section (for each of the Trio had lazily chosen to study the language they knew best) and wandered over to Old Fritz's classroom.

When the lesson was over, a peaceful hour of doodling on his notebook and dozing lightly, he wandered over to the cafeteria to re-meet his friends. They were, somewhat startlingly, there before him, both sprawled across their usual table and laughing about something. Surprisingly, his brother was with them.

"WEST!" he yelled, enjoying the wince that crossed the younger's face.

"Brudder…"

Ludwig 'West' Beilschmidt was a sophomore and most of the time was unlike Gilbert as it was possible to get without being female. Tall, blond and serious, the younger Beilschmidt was a stickler for rules and viewed authority with the utmost respect. It was often considered miraculous that the two brothers were even capable of tolerating each other, let alone having something that occasionally bordered on friendship.

Gilbert couldn't actually think of anything he wanted to say to his younger sibling, they had spoken only a few hours ago, and so instead decided to punch his brother in the arm. Not particularly hard.

He sat down on his chair just as he saw a red-headed freshman (and near clone of Antonio's crush Romano) come dashing into the room. It was Feliciano, Romano's brother, who he knew from middle school and the occasional spent staking out his house with Antonio.

"Ve~! Antonio! Francis! Ludwig! Guess what?"

Gilbert cleared his throat.

"Hi Gilbert! Guess what?"

"What is it?"

"There's a new student in your year! Have you met him! I have! He's on the bench outside the library! Who do you think will be his new friends? He's come from England!"

Gilbert saw the look on Francis' face change from bored disdain to his 'fresh meat' expression. Not that Francis would admit he had one – he swore it was just 'friendliness.' Gilbert knew, however, that the French teen was definitely interested in any prospects he could find to spread his rather perverted idea of love to and therefore wasn't surprised when Francis responded, "I think we should go and greet this new student."

Gilbert smirked and nodded, his interests in a new student weren't the same as Francis' but it would still be good for the British guy to learn who was boss at Hetalia High.

Gilbert would never, ever, ever confess to the fact that he actually visited the school's library on occasion (even if it was only to use their computers to update his Awesome blog.) However, it also wouldn't do for it to appear as if he did not know his way around every inch of the school (even and most especially those areas he was not permitted to be in), and so he kept his pace evenly between that of Francis and Antonio, hoping that people would interpret it positively.

He did, however, recognize the library building on sight which made it fairly easy to guess that the lone student sitting (not slouching) on the bench in front of it was the new guy. That was the thing, if you switched schools at elementary or middle school level you were deemed cool and interesting and practically everybody would want to be your friend. If you switched in high school, however, the students had already built settled friendships and nobody wanted to know about sad, lonely new kids. Except Feliciano. And Francis - but in a creepy way.

Gilbert already had an opinion on the new guy before they'd gotten within speaking distance. With his ruler-straight posture and his large bag (not even a rucksack and who on earth would need to carry so much stuff around anyway?) this guy was sure to be another Roderich - uptight, stuffy and boring.

"Bon jour mon cher…" Francis announced the moment they were with a reasonable distance.

The teen ignored him completely. With his side on view Gilbert could see his appearance fairly clearly. He was wearing smart clothes (far too smart for school) and his shoes were polished to a shine (Gilbert nearly recoiled from the sheer horror of it all) but, as if to deliberately ruin the prissy image, his blonde hair lay in a manner that looked as though it had never seen a brush.

"Hi new kid!"

And that was Feli, bouncing with excitement.

"Hola." Clearly Antonio still thought he was in class.

The guy still wasn't paying the slightest bit of attention. But Gilbert had a way to change that.

"And the Awesome Me, Gilbert the Awesome."

And that got the guy to turn and look at them. The Awesomeness was just irresistible.

"Arthur Kirkland."

Gilbert's first thought was that holy hell, he STILL hadn't grown into those eyebrows!

His second was to faint. Which he didn't, because of his Awesome, but a less awesome person would have done.

Instead he just did a very accurate impression of Ludwig's fish the time he'd taken it out of its bowl for a walk…