Never Leave a Friend Behind

[Peaches]

[As requested; Sept ninth, after classes, and closed to Louis and Peaches. And whoops... I seem to have written a short essay of a post focused almost entirely on Peaches' uniform ^^;; ]


She...

...looked perfectly ridiculous.

How, she didn't know, but the school had somehow managed to cobble together a uniform big enough to fit her; at least mostly. Peaches almost wished they hadn't been able to.

It had taken a lot of effort and discomfort on her part, because it still felt a good size or two too small, but the collar of a massive shirt had managed to be buttoned up around her neck; but since since she would never, by any stretch of the imagination, have ever been able to fit her massive feet into the sleeves, the rest of the shirt just draped limply across her back like some child's pitiful attempt at a superhero cape. Her fire-circle red tie was done up to her collar in an attempt to at least salvage the look somehow; though Peaches purposefully wore the knot large and loose, in what she'd gathered was the more fashionable way of having the thing - even if she wasn't trying to impress Ethan and his group anymore, the female mammoth didn't want to come off as a total loser the way a knot pulled far too tight would have proclaimed her.

And that was without even getting her started on the skirt, which was just tied up around her knees because - after ripping the first one clean in two as she struggled - she hadn't been able to get it up any higher around her admittedly round rear.

She felt like a fool - and the fact that she could only get through any of the school's doorways by breathing in a lot really didn't help her to feel any better about it. Wouldn't the Steffie and Meyghan laugh if they could see her like this?

For the tenth time - that day alone - Peaches used her trunk to tug at her collar. As much as she would have liked to unfasten her top button, as she had seen a few other students had, the furry pachyderm was well aware that she couldn't; not for as long as that one was the only button holding her shirt together at all. At this point, she had just accepted that she had literally no option but to grin, bear it, and pretend she didn't feel like she was slowly choking.

She was seated out in the four-circle quad, a pencil tucked behind her ear as she frowned at her homework. It was too nice a day, Peaches had decided, to head back to the stone castle that served as her dorm - and she could tell from a glance that she wouldn't fit in the library, where most students went to do their work - so she had settled down in the quad, and was purposefully ignoring the multitude of odd glances cast her way.

Or, almost ignoring. Every time she heard someone approaching, one green eye would turn away from her work in the hopes that it would be Louis, who she had lost contact with shortly after arrival; so far, however, she had been met with nothing but disappointment on that count.

[Louis]

Approaching, yes. On the ground? No. Underground was more like it. As it was after classes, Louis had ditched his uniform and spent time digging under the ground. His head popped above the dirt, hair crumbled with the stuff, head dipping forward as he surveyed his above ground surroundings. The male looked about, hair still filled with dust and dirt as his head turned. The male was distraught. The fights had ended, the tense taste was on the air once again. Louis was horrified that he could be chosen or even worse, that Peaches could be.

Thinking of his larger fuzzier friend made his stomach drop. He knew she wasn't in the fights but so far she hadn't been in any of his classes either. He sighed, head lowering as he thought of her. His best friend. He'd seen everyone walking around with companions and Louis had just sort of...lost her. He felt terrible about it until-

"Wait...Peaches?" He lept out of his self made hole, grinning wildly as he ran over towards her. He slid out from beside her, staring up at her lovely green eyes. "Peaches! There you are! I-" His nose scrunched as he took in the sight of her uniform.

"Oh...you look...nice?"

[Peaches]

"Louis!" Although her friend's voice had startled her since she'd missed his approach, Peaches recovered herself quickly and grinned down at the small mammal, brushing the front few strands of hair back from her forehead with her trunk. For a moment, the mammoth forgot all about how ridiculous she felt as she stood back to her feet and ruffled Louis' hair affectionately. The question 'where did you come from' was on the tip of her tongue before Peaches realised it was a bit of a silly one to ask. As the molehog had so often said, he travelled underground; and the hole about his size nearby was proof of that.

"Aw, Louis." As uncomfortable as she was with her failure of a uniform, which his mention of her appearance had brought her right back to, Peaches couldn't help a small smile. That was her greatest friend ever, always trying to make her feel better; though this time, his hesitation betrayed him, and the mammoth gave a shake of her head. "It's okay, you don't have to lie; I know this makes me look dumb."

She plucked at the end of her tie self-consciously. While the large girl was aware that Louis often managed to believe that she looked okay, in spite of near enough anything, the mammoth figured that even he would be hard-pressed to find anything positive about her present get-up. Peaches gave her tight collar another tug before reminding herself that Louis was her friend; he wasn't going to care all that much how she looked.

"But I'm happy to see you. I didn't know where you'd gone after we got separated." As small as he was, it had made searching for him an impossible task even when she hadn't been too caught up in her struggle to adjust to what was all thoroughly new to her.