Grown Up- an Ah! My Goddess fanfic

Please review. I suffer from a lack of critiques. I also suffer from a lack of praise. Whether or not you want to offer me one or the other, I don’t care. Just tell me what you think.

A note to AFF.net readers. I have also posted this story on FF.net. The FF.net version is going to be exactly the same story until I hit the sexual content. FF.net is going to be the ‘watered down’ version, while you folks here get uncut directors version. When I get to those chapters, that is…


Chapter 3

Skuld hadn’t figured on being all that popular at school. The only reason she was going at all was Sentaro. She had thought that she could enter quietly and have more time with Sentaro. It was not as if she had planned on estranging herself from her other classmates or anything. She just thought that she would be nice to them and for the most part she’d be left alone with Sentaro.
But before she could even move during the lunch break, the girls in her class had surrounded her. After a flurry of introductions and counter introductions, the girls finally got down to their real business. “You are so smart! You didn’t even look like you were even paying attention, and then you solve a math problem without even blinking!” exclaimed one girl. Skuld sighed and thought, just like in Heaven. Let the gossip begin.
“Oh, Wow.” Breathed another girl who leaned in closely to inspect Skuld’s face. “How do you keep your skin so clear and smooth?” she asked. “You keep it so beautiful. What kind of skin care do you use?”
Skuld was about to answer when she remembered what Keiichi and Belldandy had told her before sending her off that morning. “Skuld, you are a nice person, but you tend to put people off sometimes with the way you act. For at least the first day of school, tone it down a bit, okay?”
“Skin care?” Skuld said, wrinkling her nose a little. “Um, what kind of care does skin need?” She stopped and looked around at the stunned faces around her. “Did I say something wrong?” she asked blankly. One of the girls recovered and hastily asked, “Well, how do you keep your hair so long, smooth, and shiny?” the girl leaned closer, touched her hair gently and said, “It’s so soft and it smells really nice. What kind of shampoo and moisturizer do you use?”
“Um…” Skuld paused, trying to think a little before answering. Obviously she had said something the girls had considered stranger earlier. She had to be careful with this one. “I use what my older sisters both use?” she replied hesitantly. A wave of relief passes over the faces of the girls around her. The girl asks, a bit more confidently this time, “What brand do they use? Is it something really expensive?”
Skuld wrinkled her nose again. Why were they asking all theses weird questions? Did it really matter what shampoo she used? It only cleaned your hair. She would understand the reason if they asked what oil she used most often as lubricant, or what brand of anti-freeze she used in winter, but Shampoo? “They buy what we can afford. We usually don’t have a lot of money because Keiichi and Belldandy don’t make a lot of money from their job and there are a lot of other expenses. So we just buy the regular stuff. You know,” Skuld paused, shifted a bit uncomfortably in her seat and uneasily glancing at the expectant faces surrounding her. “I think the brand is called Yot! Su Ba. My onee-sama buys it because she likes how it smells and it is in the range of our budget.”
Skuld looks around at the ring of astonished faces around her. “Did I say something strange?” she asks confusedly. “Yot! Su Ba? That stuff is just plain kid shampoo!” a girl towards the back few rows of the ring protested. Skuld paused, and then hesitantly said, “Ummmm, yeah?” For a few moments, the silence was deafening. Then another girl bravely pushed on. “I am so jealous! You have such a nice figure. You have all the right weight in all the proper places. How did you get your bust to grow out so nicely?”
Skuld blushed. Was this a compliment? “Umm, no. But I still think they are kind of small. My sister Urd’s is so much bigger. But…” Skuld paused “ I think I don’t want them to grow too much more. It would probably be a pain. And Belldandy onee-sama isn’t that much bigger than me. A size in-between their two sizes would probably be ideal. Just the right size, so to speak.”
“So your sisters are just as beautiful as you are?” Asked a girl. Skuld blushed. That was definitely a compliment. “No, Belldandy onee-sama is much more beautiful than me!” Skuld protested. “And my other sister Urd is said to be very, very beautiful too. I have a ways to go before I reach their level.” Skuld brushed her hair behind her right ear a bit shyly. “And I am really not that beautiful. Pretty, maybe.”
All of the girls immediately protested that Skuld was indeed very beautiful. Skuld was a bit surprised. “I wasn’t fishing for compliments, or anything like that,” She said “It’s just that Onee-sama looks good in practically anything, and I can’t quite match up to that.” “What do you mean?” asked one of the girls. “Well, she looks much better in mechanics overalls than I do.” Skuld replied, a bit enviously, “If you can look beautiful in mechanics overalls, you can look good in anything,”
The girls around Skuld paused. “Mechanics overalls?” one asked hesitantly. “Why would she wear those?” Skuld paused. Where they really that dumb? Or was it a rhetorical question? Whatever. Skuld would give them the benefit of the doubt. “Because Keiichi and Onee-sama are mechanical engineers. They work at a bike shop.”
The girls looked at each other a nodded. This made more sense now. No matter how beautiful an older sister is, if she is a bike mechanic the younger sister isn’t going to be exposed to many things other girls would be thinking about normally. And a natural foreign beauty… well, they should have been expecting that.
Skuld tossed her hair behind her casually and continued into the silence created by the pause, a slightly cocky smile on her face, “Well, I don’t think I will ever surpass Onee-sama, but Urd better watch out.” She laughed lightly, “She is starting to hit the age where she is a bit of an old maid.” Skuld chuckled. “Okay, maybe I am kidding, a bit.” The other girls looked at her a bit blankly, surprised by the sudden change.
There was a bit of a pause, and then one of the girls asked the question she had been holding in.“Well, is there someone you like?” the girl asked. “Wh-wh-what?” Skuld stammered, blushing and smiling in embarrassment. And before the eyes of all the girls in class, she blushed even more deeply, looked away and said quietly, “maybe…”
It was a moment of epiphany for all of the girls in class. She is so… kawaii… was a common thought, right before a round of gentle teasing began, which lasted for a while until Skuld had recovered enough to continue talking. “So, who…” But before they could continue the conversation and ask the all important question ‘who do you like?’, the bell rang and class began again.
Skuld sighed with relief. She had been planning to eat lunch with Sentaro, but had been attacked before she could even get out of her chair. She turned her gaze toward his back, a few seats in front of her. His shoulders have really grown out a lot, she thought lazily and his back looks really broad. It would probably feel really nice to lean up against his back. Or into his chest… Skuld blushed and cut her daydreaming off right there. Her thoughts had been wandering down weird paths lately. Especially when she thought about Sentaro. But it would be nice to have him hug her. She could almost feel his big hands against her back right now…
Skuld blushed again, and stopped daydreaming because the next class was Japanese History. First day of school or not, she had to pay attention. It wouldn’t bode well for her future if she didn’t. Keiichi had informed her that an unacceptable grade in Japanese History would result in punishment by Urd. Skuld shuddered. No useless machines! It wasn’t just a matter of pride anymore!