Disclaimer: Hahahahaha, if I owned MariMite, I'd be filthy rich by now. But I'm not, so obviously I don't own it.

The Huntress

I. So they meet

Yumi Fukuzawa was standing in front of the statue of Maria-sama. Everyday, before one actually entered the school, the girls of Lillian Girls' Private Academy in Tokyo said their prayers to the Virgin Mary, who was watching over them. Yumi was no exception; why would she be one? She was just your normal, average girl, wearing pigtails in her hair, which made her look very childish yet very cute at the same time. And that cuteness had not passed unnoticed in a certain person's eyes…

Yumi was already heading for the school building, when someone called out to wait. As preferred at this school, Yumi turned around slowly and gracefully and turned her attention fully to the person who had told her to wait. She then noticed it was none other than the most popular and wanted girl of this school, Ogasawara Sachiko. And if Yumi was really your normal, average girl, she would have squealed by now, stunned by the fact that someone as cool as Sachiko had noticed her. But because of some childhood trauma, caused by her rich and upper classed aunt when she was just a little girl (in which we will not dig deeper into now), Yumi didn't really care for rich and upper classed people. Not that she knew about her lack of sympathy for high classed people, of course. So the girl merely acknowledged, nevertheless a bit shyly, that Rosa Chinensis en bouton had told her to wait.

Sachiko walked to the girl in slow-motion, as if she took the rule about walking slowly very seriously; in reality however, she had noticed that thousands and thousands of yuri-fans were looking at Yumi and her, so she had decided to let this scene last as long as possible, just to give the fans something for their money. Yumi was wondering why Sachiko was walking so incredibly slowly; she had been already walking in her direction for more than five minutes, crossing a distance that merely counted fifteen metres. The girl finally reached her destination in a record time of seven minutes.

"My, your ribbon is all crooked," Sachiko said before fixing it. Out of nowhere, Tsutako appeared and took the picture which would become a legendary picture later, and she disappeared again to where she came from.

"Please be more careful next time," Sachiko sighed after she had finished her job. "You sexy thing," she added in a murmur before watching Yumi from head to toe, in the meanwhile licking her lips.

"Excuse me?" Yumi asked in confusion. She was pretty sure she had heard the girl say something very improper, but Rosa Chinensis en bouton would never say such a thing, so perhaps it had been just a trick of her mind…?

"Nothing. Just take care of your uniform properly, okay?"

Sachiko then walked away, in the process fighting herself from grabbing Yumi's firm behind. She heard the younger girl say "Thank you very much, Sachiko-sama", but she had preferably heard her say something else, something more in the line of "Thank you very much, Sachiko-sama, and as a reward you can do with me as you please". Whatever. She would make the girl scream it to her when she was done with her. Because no-one could resist Ogasawara Sachiko.

Later that day…

"Yumi-san, gokigenyou." Tsutako-san was waving a picture in front of Yumi's face, looking very smug while doing so.

"Look at this picture I've taken this morning. Isn't it, like, the best picture you've ever seen?"

Yumi frowned when she looked at the photo showing Sachiko and her in a very soeur-like situation.

"Actually, in my opinion, this picture really isn't that good… I mean, it's pretty obvious that there's too much sunlight, so the colours are flat…" Tsutako glared at Yumi, who fell silent seeing the look on her classmate's face.

"Yumi-san, when did you become an expert in photography? Whatever, just look at what the picture shows… You and Rosa Chinensis en bouton, as if you were soeurs! Aren't you excited?" Tsutako looked at Yumi expectantly, but the girl merely shrugged her shoulders. "I guess it does look like we're soeurs, but I don't really care. I don't have any need for a soeur right now." A surprised look made its way to Tsutako's face, but she quickly composed herself and smiled.

"Okay then, if you think of it that way, I guess you won't mind then if I displayed this picture in our yearly photo-exhibition? Ah… But I also need permission from Sachiko-sama before I can use it… Would you like to come with me to the Rose Mansion to ask her?"

Without asking, she grabbed Yumi's hand and dragged her all the way to the Rose Mansion.

In the meanwhile…

Sachiko was sitting in the Rose Mansion with the rest of the Yamayurikai. She was not having a discussion with her onee-sama about the school play, because she really didn't care that the prince would be Kashiwagi Suguru, her gay cousin and soon-to-be-not-fiancé. (They had agreed to break it off, as both Kashiwagi and Sachiko were obviously not interested in the opposite sex.) She did dislike men, but she could hardly see her cousin as male; she had once walked into his room without knocking and had seen the boy putting on make-up, whilst wearing nothing but a skirt and a bra. She had laughed for about an hour – having to go to the hospital afterwards, because her lungs had hurt so much due to the lack of oxygen caused by her hysterical laughter – but she had promised not to tell anyone what she had seen. Of course, it had raised people's eyebrows when she had given him that red bra and matching red panties for his birthday.

Anyway, seeing as everything was already settled for the Yamayurikai-play, Youko decided to annoy her petite soeur with something else: her desire to have Sachiko find a soeur of her own.

"Sachiko, when are you going to search for a petite soeur? It would relieve me to no end to see someone who can control you."

"Onee-sama," Sachiko said with an icy look in her eyes, "what do you mean by that, someone who can control me..? Besides, I won't search for a soeur. I will stumble upon one when the time is right…"

At that very exact moment, as if Maria-sama herself had wanted it that way, the door of the room miraculously opened, revealing a victorious-looking Tsutako Takeshima and a rather dishevelled Yumi Fukuzawa. The members of the student council all turned their heads to see who had just opened the door.

"Gokigenyou," Tsutako greeted politely. Yumi however was still a bit out of breath, having to run all the way here because Tsutako had did so while holding Yumi's hand in a tight grip, as if she had been afraid the girl would fly away to the moon.

"Gokigenyou," the three Roses greeted back. Sachiko said nothing but just stared at the doorway, pleasantly surprised because the adorable girl from this morning was standing there too.

"I'm sorry to disturb you like this," Tsutako said, "but I had something I'd like to ask to Sachiko-sama, if that's possible?"

Sachiko didn't reply; in fact, she hadn't even heard Tsutako. She was too busy daydreaming about the other girl, who looked in such a rumpled state, a bit sweaty, with inviting lips… She snapped out of her fantasies when she heard someone yelling her name.

"Sachiko!" Youko finally screamed after she had called out calmly for twenty times. "What made you space out like that? Tsutako-chan here asked you something."

"I'm sorry, onee-sama," Sachiko apologized. "I was just a bit busy thinking about something…" Her eyes drifted back to where Yumi stood. Youko noticed where Sachiko was looking at, and so did Sei.

"Ah? You just said you would stumble upon a petite soeur when the time was right. I guess you've found her now?" Sei asked with a smirk on her face.

Sachiko glared at the White Rose, but the attentive Tsutako had already understood what Sei had meant. "Oh? So Sachiko-sama would like Yumi-san to become her petite soeur, is that it? Then I bet she'll like this photograph…" She took a few steps to Sachiko, who gave Sei one last nasty look before turning to Tsutako.

"What do you mean, I would like this photograph..?" Her eyes widened however, when Tsutako practically shoved the picture under her nose. She was speechless, not only because she was appalled that someone dared to be so rude by shoving something under her nose, but also because she thought the picture was perfect. Well, almost perfect. It would've been perfect if the brown-haired girl were naked on it. But you can't have everything in life, can you. Rei, who was sitting next to Sachiko, also looked at the picture.

"My, this picture shows Sachiko and her – I believe your name was Yumi? – in a very soeur-like situation," Rei commented. Sachiko was still a bit bedazzled when all members of the student council gathered around her to watch the picture.

"Rei is right," Eriko said after she had taken a look at the photograph. "So you already have a petite soeur then, Sachiko-chan? And you didn't even tell us?"

It was Yumi who answered, still standing in the doorway, a bit shy. "Ehm, Sachiko-sama and I aren't soeurs. She just fixed my ribbon this morning, and I thanked her. I have no idea how Tsutako-san could have made a shot of it, but ehm… I know the picture is ambiguous, but I'm not Sachiko-sama's petite soeur."

Sachiko rose to her feet, ignoring the disappointed yet sceptical looks from her fellow council members, and opened her mouth to give them a more thorough explanation.

"Yumi here is right. I saw that her uniform was a bit ruffled, so I went and fixed it for her. I know we do look like close soeurs on the picture, but trust me, she's not my petite soeur. Yet."

The last word dropped like a bomb on an ice cream parlour, leaving everyone to react to it on her own way. Sei started laughing like she was some psycho woman; Shimako, for some unknown reason, took a piece of chocolat our of her bag and started eating it; Yoshino merely gasped, looking surprised (she would have reacted like Sei if she had undergone the surgery already... damn heart disease); Eriko did a little dance; Rei started baking a fruit cake and Youko went over to Sachiko and grabbed her hand, her eyes twinkling.

"I'm glad you've finally chosen your petite soeur," she said with a smile from here to Jamaica. Sachiko was beaming too, while Tsutako was frantically taking pictures of this marvellous scene, ready to sell them to the highest bidder if they got developed. Out of the doorway however, came a squeaky voice.

"W-Wait a second here!" Yumi gasped, rather shocked by this weird turn of events. "I'm sorry, what is this all about? Are you telling me that Sachiko-sama wants me to be her petite soeur?" She was looking from one Rose to another questioningly. Sachiko turned her attention to the short, sexy girl, and smiled.

"Yumi. I would like you to be my petite soeur, if you want to." Out of nowhere, she took out a rosary and held it to her expectantly. The thought of Yumi not accepting her rosary didn't even cross her mind, because after all, she was Ogasawara Sachiko, the hottest girl on campus.

Yumi however, thought differently about it. She took a step backwards as if the rosary was some evil disease and she didn't want to be contaminated. "I-I'm sorry, Sachiko-sama," she said firmly after a few hesitant moments. "I'm very honoured that you want to make me your petite soeur, but I can't accept your rosary. I'm very sorry."

She quickly bowed, muttered "Gokigenyou" and dashed out of the room, leaving a totally perplexed Sachiko behind. Tsutako followed her, but not after taking a picture of Sachiko's baffled face first. After a few minutes of deafening silence, Sei whistled.

"Wow, I'd never expected her to turn you down so easily. What are you going to do now, Sachiko-chan?"

Sachiko didn't answer immediately, because her brains were still a pulpy mess in her skull. What the hell had just happened?

"Sachiko," Youko said softly after a while, "are you alright? Would you like some tea? Or would you like a piece of the fruit cake Rei-chan has just made in three minutes? Or maybe you want me to punish Sei for her tendency to blurt things out so casually? I always bring some really fine whips with me, and I could use them on Sei if you'd like to…"

Sachiko returned to the human world and watched Sei, who looked like she didn't mind at all if Youko whipped her.

"Thank you, onee-sama, but I don't think it's necessary for you to punish Rosa Gigantea." She said with a stoic look on her face and without questioning why Youko always brought a whip with her.

Sachiko was a bit disgusted by her own arrogance. She had thought Yumi would accept her rosary for sure, but now Sachiko had realised that they had only met this morning, and that they hadn't even had a conversation with each other yet. Well, not that it was really her fault for being so arrogant; she was just so used to heaps and heaps of girls goggling at her with eyes full of admiration and lust. Not that she really liked it, to be honest. But Yumi was not like that; she hadn't looked at her with those eyes, and she had turned her down so determinately… And it just happened that this girl was the only girl Sachiko really wanted to get to know better, in more than one way. She didn't really understood why, but Yumi had this effect on her. Maybe it was because of those pigtails; Sachiko had always been a sucker for girls who wore pigtails in their hair (except for her cousin Matsudaira Touko, who looked like an over-sized corckshrew with those pigtails).

Determination exploded in Sachiko's chest when she turned to the White Rose. "Sei-sama, you wanted to know what I'm going to do now? Well, I'll tell you what I'm going to do. I'm going to make Yumi my petite soeur, no matter what!"

She looked a bit demonic now, breathing heavily and having her fists clenched very, very tightly. The other members of the Yamayurikai quickly turned their heads away so they wouldn't face Sachiko's deadly glare of mayhem. Sachiko didn't give a damn however; the only thing important now was to make sure Yumi accepted her rosary. Because the girl would accept it, and Sachiko would take care of that. No matter what.

A/N: Would you like me to continue this story, or would you rather hit me on the head with a baseball bat to make sure I'll never put a word on paper again? Either way, let me know!