"Oh my god mom." I looked down at my figure not yet brave enough to venture to the mirror. "I don't even… Oh my god." I, who had mastered five different languages by age thirteen, was speechless. There were no words, no words at all to describe just how, I don't even know, if I did, there would be words…. Which there weren't. Already with this disappointing lack of vocabulary my story is not off to a promising start. Let's continue anyway.

My mother sat at the table fiddling with a lock, too concentrated on her task to look up. "It's not that bad." The light of our dingy, and thankfully temporary, one bedroom apartment flickered overhead but remained on, casting the room in a dirty yellow light.

"Really?" I asked doubtfully, "I feel like Fiona in that one scene in Shrek the third. Not only is this probably the ugliest thing I've ever worn, but if I wear it too long I'm pretty sure it will crunch my insides."

"You wouldn't have a problem if you didn't slouch so much." She pointed out. "Maybe this dress will fix your posture."

I sighed and finally walked over from the kitchen to the bedroom to look into the full length mirror. "Oh heck no." I uttered staring directly into the reflection. First of all, the dress was yellow. That light mustardy yellow that doesn't look good on anyone. Second, "Look at these hips!" I exclaimed.

"It's not nearly as bad as-" She started finally looking up and then gave up instead attempting- and failing to hold in her laughter.

I crossed my arms and attempted to lean against the door frame in a gesture of, yeah-laugh-it-up,-I'll-wait-'till-you're-done, but found that with the skirt, said action was impossible. "They used those cagey things under the skirt!" I whined, "Those cagey things! No one uses those cagey things anymore!"

"There called crinolines." My mother smiled, "If you don't want to look like a fool on jobs at least learn the vocabulary."

"I know." I said irritated by her nagging. I pat the skirt which gathered on either side to rise a little at the hips. To me it bore the uncanny resemblance of the hind quarters on a cow.

I turned ninety degrees, glancing over my shoulder and winced, "Not any better at this angle." I sighed.

"Well, if you get your job done fast, you can take it off and never have to wear that thing ever again." She had returned her attention to the lock and it finally opened and she threw up her arms in victory.

"What are you even doing anyway?" I finally asked.

"I just proved it IS possible to pick a lock with human hair. Akiyama owes me 10000 yen." She said haughtily, twirling a thin brown strand between her index finger and thumb.

"Woah, seriously?" I asked coming up behind her as she demonstrated her new technique involving threading, and pulling at such an angle to give leverage. I watched in awe, my discomfort at the itchy underskirt temporarily forgotten. "That's awesome." I said turning the lock in my hand.

A quick thing I should probably mention about my family before you get completely lost. We are what one would consider to be thieves by profession. Good ones at that, not good as in good and evil type good, but skilled. Although we do stick to our morals. You could say that we have adopted a variation of the Robin Hood mentality. We would never take from those who are in need (though arguably it's more because of the correlation of effort to steal vs. pay-off), we specialize solely in the rich. That being said we're certainly not a charity. Our way of giving back is not to individuals but society as a whole. We take money that would ordinarily be catching dust in platinum bank accounts and circulate it back into the economy, we also take valuable pieces of art and such hoarded by rich collectors and allow the pieces to be viewed by all.

Of course, ethical stealing garners extreme risk. The wealthy are very attached to their money after all and have the means to protect it at great cost. As such, over generations we have mastered and created several different specialized skill sets which have made us quite formidable. There is no one in the underground community that doesn't know the family name, Hikage.

Also I was not just wearing this hideous dress for poops and giggles. No, I just turned sixteen and that means one thing in my household, I was to complete my first solo job. Thus, a week ago, we packed up all of our belongings in France and headed out to Japan. This also meant transferring highschools but I didn't really mind, the first rule of the Hikage family: Never become too attached to a person, place or thing.

I'll be the first to admit, it's not the easiest rule to follow, but if you never make any friends to begin with it helps. So I've become a little disattached and confrontational over the years.

"Mei." My mother finally said.

Yeah, my name literally translates in English to Shadow Shadow Child. Got a problem with it? (see what I mean, confrontational) I stopped tugging at the ribbon at my neck at looked at her. "It is time." She said and I swivelled my head to view out the window and saw the limo pulling up.

It was only when we were both in, the driver had risen up the divider, and the car began to move that she finally started the debriefing.

"I assume you have some idea as to what you're doing by now." She said.

"We're in a limo, so we're trying to show wealth." I started, "This dress is rather plain yet obviously expensive and made of high quality fabric so it's a type of uniform? Based on the time of day a school uniform? I am to infiltrate a private school?" I tried.

"Good." Said my mother.

"Really?" I asked.

"No." She snapped whacking me on the head with a file folder. "You should at least be able to recognize this as the Ouran High School uniform! It's only one of the richest schools in the world!"

I sulked and took the folder. It wasn't my fault, I hadn't been in Japan since I was five or six. "Is there a reason why you couldn't tell me what the job was until now?" I asked.

"Yes." She replied. "You won't like it."

"What's that supposed to mean?" I asked warily and then quickly opened the folder. The first paper was a small picture of two twin boys around my age.

I looked to my mother for explanation.

"Do you remember the last job I did before we had to flee the country?" She asked.

"You infiltrated the home of a high profile family as a maid and robbed them of a fortune." I said.

"Yeah." She said sadly, I titled my head, mother was never remorseful about a heist, only boastful. "It was the home of these two boys." She sighed.

"Alright." I said guardedly.

"I made a promise to them as children." She said. "My cover was blown, somehow they figured out that I was after their money yet they gave me one simple challenge. To tell which of them was which. If I answered they'd give me the combo to the vault and let me escape into the night."

I snorted, "Just like the rich to throw away their money. The little snots have no appreciation of its value."

"That's not it." My mother objected, "They were just so lonely. For whatever reason I was the only person they ever seemed to trust. They wanted someone to be able to tell them apart."

Oh throw them a pity party, poor poor rich children have problems too. They're lonely. There are people starving to death every day but no, they are the most pitiful children in the whole wide world.

"I could not fulfill that promise, I stole the code while they were sleeping." She said. "But now it's your turn, get to know them, fulfill their wish in my stead."

I looked at her blankly. "What?"

"I know this isn't what you thought would be your first job but-"

"No kidding! This isn't even a job! In fact it's a violation of the first rule! You grew attached to them, now I have to ice their booboos?!" I snarled.

"I think it's the perfect test for you." She sniffed, "You are much weaker than I am so don't even give me that look. You have zero social skills. Of course you'd never grown attached to anyone, you've never spoken a kind word to anyone outside the family, but on a job where you must pretend to be the target's friend, I wonder how it'll go? May I remind you the last time you tried to play grifter you ended up kicking the target through a wall."

"It was a shoji screen." I said in defense. "Wind can knock those things down."

"This is your mission." She said firmly, "No tradesies."

I crossed my arms and slouched in the seat only to sit back upright in order to breathe. Stupid dress.

"Now you read those files the rest of the way, young lady." She said, failing horribly at sounding like a mother.

I swept my jet black bangs out of my face and began to read the job description. My name was now Ueda Mei. Well at least I got to keep half of my real name. My family got rich in oil in Calgary, Canada before returning to Japan with enough money to last several generations and currently possessed several profiting investment shares.

With my identity firmly in place I picked up the brochure, Ouran Private Academy.

How hard could this mission be? I'll be out by lunch today.

Hi y'all. I'm Umbreonix, It's been a super long time since I've written anything for Ouran Highschool Host Club but I've had this story in my documents for years and just really really wanted to post it. So I did. Yeah. Cool beans. At this point in the process reviews are really helpful ;) *wink wink, nudge nudge*Afterall, this story is by no means already mapped out, it kind of develops as I go, so if you have any suggestions by all mean shoot. I'm not even sure I know who exactly I'm going to stick her with.