Hayate X Blade

Hayate X Blade (はやて×ブレード Hayate X Burēdo, read as Hayate Cross Blade) is a Japanese manga series written and illustrated by Shizuru Hayashiya. The series is set is an all-girls school with sword-fighting at the center of the story. Originally published by ASCII Media Works, the manga started serialization in the shōnen magazine Dengeki Daioh on November 21, 2003 and ran in that magazine until May 21, 2008. The manga restarted serialization in Shueisha's seinen magazine Ultra Jump on August 19, 2008. As of December 2008, nine bound volumes have been released in Japan by both ASCII Media Works and Shueisha. Seven Seas Entertainment licensed the manga for release in English, and the first volume was released in October 2008. Three drama CDs based on the manga were released in Japan by Frontier Works in collaboration with Geneon between March 2006 and May 2008.

Plot
Tenchi Academy is an all-girls school that teaches regular classes as well as "Sword Arts". In Sword Arts, students attempt to perfect their combat skills by dueling each other. There are also Duels for Stars (星奪り Hoshitori), where students form a partnership with another and defeat other pairs to win rank and stars. There are 174 teams (348 students) that fight under the Hoshitori system. The administrator (also the student council president) of the school will give money to those with more stars, saying that "any wish will be granted, if you have enough stars."

Nagi Kurogane is a sword scholarship student of Tenchi Academy. However, she cannot go to school because she is undergoing rehabilitation. Therefore, her twin little sister, Hayate, disguises herself as Nagi to go to the school. In the school, the scholarship student must fight against other scholarship students to win higher ranks. But because Hayate's only interest is how to pretend to be Nagi, she is not interested in the mandatory fights. However, knowing that her old orphanage is in eight million yen in debt, and is being harassed by collectors, Hayate resolves her mind to take part in the fights. The participant gets 50,000 yen if she wins a bout, and she gets one million yen if she enters the next rank.

Since each participant must have her partner, Hayate asks Ayana Mudō to be her partner. Ayana is a talented swordsman, but she does not take part in the fighting because of her personal reasons. At first, Ayana thinks Hayate is annoying, but in order to face her ex-partner whom Ayana injured during the duels, she cooperates with Hayate.