Leo's pov

I remember telling Aquarius – I think it was about a month ago – how much I loved the summer, with its warm days and sunny weather, and that I couldn't get enough of it. It's definitely surprising that I happened to remember that now, at 6.30 in the morning, as the sun was practically burning down the sheets on my bed.

With a soft groan, I kicked them away and rolled out of bed, immediately closing the curtains to keep the sun away. 'Damn you, summer,' I mumbled, and almost would've dropped back in bed, if it wasn't for a strange sound alarming my ears.

Prepared for the worst, I opened my bedroom door and snuck into the living room, carefully checking for possible nightmare creatures lurking from under the couch. Every piece of furniture was suspicious, everything around me could secretly be a burglar in disguise – or worse, what if the Dwarf had snuck into here? I mean, she'd managed to get into Scorpio's place, what if she was here? What would she want?

But every single suspect I had immediately fell away the moment I opened the kitchen door; because, instead of a thief, or a monster, or a dwarf, it was my mother, clumsily trying to gather the glass on the floor of a broken cup.

'Mum?' I whispered, trying not to startle her, but it the opposite effect. She covered her mouth with her hands in surprise, but that didn't stop her from letting out a small scream.

'Leo! What are you doing up this early? Wait, let me – hang on...' With big steps, she managed to get over the mess of glass on the floor, and hugged me tightly. 'Good morning, Lee,' she muttered into my ear, and somehow, I knew she was smiling – which was confirmed the second she pulled away from me, and just stood there holding my shoulders. 'You don't know how happy I am to see you! It's been days, hasn't it – I'm so sorry, I had so much to do – work's been crazy – so I had to get up early and come home a little later than usual. I was just about to write you a little message for today, because I have to leave in – oops, negative two minutes. Well, I...'

'I'll clean up the mess,' I said, and somehow, I was smiling myself as well.

She started smiling again, the warm, full smile that I had missed dearly, the smile of which I couldn't help but wonder if I had that same smile every time I looked in a mirror. 'Lee, I know I said this so many times, but if only we had enough money... you have no idea how horrible I feel every day, for not being able to see you because of work...' My own smile started to fade away, and I felt a strange throb in my throat. 'Didn't you say you were running late?' I whispered.

'Yes, I did.' My mother grabbed her bag from the table and smiled at me one last time before opening the door. 'Good luck at school today, honey. I love you.'

'I love you too,' I said, and just like that, the door closed, and she was gone.

I blinked, and only then I noticed the tears dripping down my cheeks.

Aquarius wouldn't believe me in Science class when I told her I really, really was fine. She kept giving me those worried looks, and I was hoping she would let it go, but just as she stopped asking me questions, Cancer replaced her.

'Are you sure you're okay?' she asked, a frown placed on her forehead, and I nodded stubbornly. 'Yes, I am sure I'm okay. Don't worry too much about it.

Now,' I interrupted her, changing the subject she and Aqua were still on, 'I heard you and Libra were having a pretty good time at Little Heaven yesterday.' 'Wait, you heard?' asked Aqua, and Cancer chuckled. 'Yeah, it was pretty hard to ignore Aries rushing through the hallway, shouting about it.' 'She was shouting about it?' Aquarius repeated, a look of fear on her face. 'What was she shouting?'

Cancer and I exchanged looks; we both knew very well what Aries had said, but neither of us really wanted to tell Aqua. Finally, Cancer started: 'Well, she kind of repeated one particular word a lot, so I'm going to replace that word with the word... puppy. Just to... keep this polite.' Aqua's expression didn't get any better when Cancer cleared her throat, and said: '"If that puppy girl doesn't puppy tell me what the puppy is going on, I will puppy force it out of her or her puppy friends until someone tells me the puppy truth."'

Aquarius bit her lip. 'Aha, so the word puppy stands for fu-'

'Ahem! Girls in the back of the class, if you insist on wanting to get a bad mark for the test, I would advise you to keep ignoring my explanation,' our Science teacher shouted, as everyone turned around to look at us. 'Yes, sir,' I muttered, and he went back to explaining the boring subject that was Science.

As soon as he'd turned his back, everyone turned around again, except for one person on my left side. 'Yeah, Furface, I don't think you'd want a bad mark for Science this year,' a certain short person snickered. 'Wasn't that one of the things you failed on last year?'

'Shut up, Aries,' hissed Cancer, who was sitting in front of me and heard what she'd said. 'You have nothing to do with this.'

'Neither do you,' Aries shot back, 'as I recall, I was talking to the lion, not to you.'

'Come on, let's focus on the lesson, alright?' Aquarius muttered under her breath, but the Dwarf still caught it and shot back: 'I'm not talking to you either! Can't you two stay out of this, I'm trying to talk to Furface!'

'Well, whatever it is you want to talk about,' I hissed, finally facing Aries myself, 'I don't care. And I'm done wasting my time on you for this hour, so why don't you turn back around and puppy off, alright?'

'Well isn't that great, because I'm also done wasting my time on you!' she sizzled back.

'Then how about you leave me alone!' I shouted.

And when I say "shouted", I actually mean "shouted". Unfortunately, that didn't go by unnoticed.

'Leo! Aries! That's it!' the teacher snorted, and pointed towards the door. 'Now look at what you've done,' Aries whispered as she walked past my desk, bag hoisted over her shoulder. I slowly rose from my seat and, after a last glance at Aqua and Cancer, followed my enemy outside.

'You just couldn't keep your mouth shut, could you?' mumbled Aries. I didn't respond, closing the door behind me as we started making our way over to the principal's office.

My thoughts were quickly distracted from the grumbling dwarf in front of me; luckily. The blue walls on both my sides were filled with many posters and pictures from students and teachers of past years, which reminded me of the principal we were about to go to. Mister Monar truly had been a blessing these last few years, mainly because he was one of the nicest people in this entire school. He would always make sure we were alright, no matter what happened, and if you were send out in a class, he'd always listen to what you had to say. And, best of all, if it was your last hour – like it was ours right now – he'd let you go home without making you do any extra work.

Realizing I was snickering when we were in front of his office, I quickly put on a regular smile and after Aries gave me a last dirty look, she knocked on the door.

'Yes?'

'It's Aries and Leo, sir. Our Science teacher sent us out,' Aries responded. It took a little while before we received a proper answer. 'Come in, then.'

Aries turned the doorknob and pushed; and at that moment, memories from last year flew back to my mind. His office was one of the only places in school that wasn't painted blue, like the classrooms and halls, but a light shade of orange. His desk, bright white and organized, with papers neatly stacked on the side, was situated in the middle of the office, in front of the window, with a black wheelchair behind it. On both the right and the left side stood two cabinets, the only grey things in this room, which were filled with all kinds of school stuff – tests, records, yearbooks, you name it – and finally, there were three small chairs on the right side of the door, standing in front of a small table at which you had to sit and do extra homework, in case you really messed up. There were only three, probably because he wasn't expecting more than three students to misbehave at the same time.

Monar was sitting in his chair when we came in, writing down whatever on a piece of paper, as he looked up, and I could've sworn I saw a spark of recognition in his eyes. Aries stopped in front of his desk, leaning her hands on the wood, and said in a monotone voice: 'Mister Baker from Science sent us out of class because we were talking during his explanation.'

'Did he?' asked Monar, an eyebrow cocking up.

'It was a completely unfair and unjust event, sir,' she continued, 'but luckily, it was our last hour, if you know what I mean.'

A small smirk appeared on her face, which I took as a sign she was proud of herself – why wouldn't she be, barely a week at school and she could already brag about how she got sent home early. However, that wasn't yet the case, as Monar remained silent.

Finally, he said: 'If I understand correctly, Mister Baker was explaining something when you were talking?' 'He was, sir,' I answered, earning a nod in response.

'And was it the first time you were talking?'

'Well, Fur- I mean, Leo had already talked before that.'

'Had he given you a warning?'

'He had, actually, but...'

I didn't finish my sentence; I wouldn't know how to finish it anyway. Monar didn't ask any more questions, and next to me, Miss Dwarf still had that annoying smirk on her lips.

The longer it took him to say something, the more nervous I got. Monar never acted this way, he had always been very happy to see us and was always up for a good talk about the teachers, but he never remained silent for this long without even properly greeting us. And I wasn't the only one feeling this way.

'Sir,' Aries began, 'is everything –'

'Cleaning duty after school.'

'What?'

It was a long time ago me and Aries said the same thing, at the same time, in the same voice. We couldn't help but quickly gaze over at each other, and as I noticed she was as surprised – no, shocked – as I was, we turned back to Monar.

'But – sir –'

'Until five p.m.,' Monar said, who apparently hadn't been done talking.

I felt my mouth fall open. 'B-But sir! You can't do this! I – we – never had cleaning duty before, all those times we were here! Never! This is completely unfair!'

Monar had turned back to the paper he was writing on, but looked up again. 'Oh? Well, seeing how many times you've been in here without getting cleaning duty, I think it's only proper that you make it up for that.' He folded the paper and stood up.

'Cleaning duty for the rest of this week...'

Aries cursed loudly.

'...and for next week, just to be sure the message gets through.'

Monar looked from Aries to me, picked up a bag that was sitting behind the desk and walked around it. 'Now, if you'll excuse me, I have a meeting to attend. I'm sure the janitor will be delighted to show you where the cleaning supplies are.'

He walked past us, leaving us staring open-mouthed at the open door he walked through. I didn't have any words for this – as I had told Monar, we'd never had cleaning duty before! And he knew, because it was him who was nice enough to just let us go off – him, who was always willing to compromise – him, who would never let us do any work – him, who treated us amazingly – him, who made school fun again.

I don't know for how long we stood there, but it must have been a few minutes when Aries let out another groan.

'You just couldn't keep your mouth shut, could you?'

     Sagittarius' pov

'That woman,' I groaned, as we left the classroom with Miss Gagne evilly smiling at us from her desk. 'Is it her lifegoal to ruin our school period?'

Even though today's lesson was only the second French class we'd had, Gagne had made sure to make it a terrible class for us. To begin with, she'd parted us all – I was now sitting in front of her desk, Cap sat somewhere a couple of rows behind me, and Gem was all the way back in class, making it impossible for us to talk with each other; especially since she'd made a new rule in class: no talking, or she would personally make sure you had to stay after school. 'I guess she just doesn't have a life of her own,' sighed Gemini, and after a short visit to our lockers, we left the school.

It was a Thursday, only the fourth day after school had officially started, and even though I told everyone I hated it so far, I was definitely lying – except for the French lessons, of course – because I loved it. The teachers were so nice; our P.E. teacher had taken his time to ask me about the sports I liked, and what my strengths and weaknesses were, I talked to multiple of our classmates about the meaning of life during Philosophy and I even briefly met with the principal, Mister Monar, who had asked for my name and if I liked it here at school. I'd said yes – of course, how could I not like the bright walls, the large classrooms, the nice janitor who had so far always greeted me, or the older students who were certainly willing to offer me help when I needed it?

Monar had nodded quickly, looked at his watch, then asked me what the best thing was so far. I didn't even need to think.

History.

Capricorn didn't have History, and with that, it was the only thing our schedules didn't have in common. It really was a shame, because History was so much fun. In the only lesson we'd had so far, the teacher had already told us to put away our books, form small groups and take out our phones. I remember asking Gem if this was normal, but she'd never had this teacher before either, so we both just dealt with it. After everyone had whipped out their phones, our teacher had us look up a rap song about George Washington. As we were all listening to it – laughing at the lyrics and bobbing along to the beat – the teacher drew Washington on the chalkboard and asked us if we knew anything about him. After some lousy attempts to describe his life, he started telling us things about Washington's youth, and to be honest, it was actually really interesting.

Anyway, long story short, History was still my favourite class.

'We already have so much homework,' Gem whined, as soon as we arrived in the hallway in the Chaos Flat. Cap sighed in response. 'Yeah; we still have to decipher that stupid poem for Literature, five Math exercises...'

'...and reading that long text on pages 5 and 6, for French,' I finished. 'So, where are we going today? The others won't be home until 3 p.m., so we can crash anywhere.'

'Not at my place; once Q is home, she won't stop bothering us telling to do our homework,' groaned Cap. 'I don't think she notices how annoying she can be some times.' 'Pisces will be at Virgo's this noon and Aries never bothers me – in fact, she hates it when I bother her,' stated Gemini with a smile, 'so I don't think anyone will bother us during our "preparations" at my place.'

With "preparations" I – and we – meant that we weren't going to do homework today. Instead, we were going to think of a plan to get Gagne down.

'Alright; so I printed her schedule this morning and she has to pass the stairs in building A two times, we could set up some sort of trap over there...'

'Yeah, but that's during break. We can't pull something on her during break time; Monar will know before we even finish.'

'So what about the long hall in building B? Her classroom is right there, and she'll never suspect it?'

'Right outside of Monar's office? I know you're crazy, but maybe dial it down a notch?'

'Well, if one of us could just... distract Monar...'

We must've stayed up for many, many hours, because it was already dark when Pisces came bursting in, asking us if we knew where Aries was. Just as I was about to say we were too busy trying to destroy Gagne to keep track of Aries, she walked in – or perhaps "stomped" would be more fitting in this case – with the angriest, most frustrated look I'd seen yet in the first week of school.

'Monar has gone crazy, absolutely crazy,' she panted, as the four of us looked at her in shock, 'and Furface has become even more of a bitch then she already was.'

'What happened?' Pisces asked when our sister made her way towards her room. Aries snorted softly as she opened the door. 'Let's just say, I won't be joining in on cleaning up the kitchen this evening.'