On the platform: Meet the new characters

[utopiamods]

Rakuen is warm in the noon sun, not humid enough to be uncomfortable but bright enough to make the transition from train to platform momentarily disorienting. The group greeting you is rather large, but also rather uneven - on one side, ten students in black and green; on the other, six in red and white. Whilst the green group are all fairly average, all teenagers other than the tiny, frail woman leading them, the red group are a tad more varied. One of their girls is tiny, the size of a small child, and her wings are beating patterns in the warm air. At the other side of the group, a warlike man looms over his comrades.

When they notice the arrivals, one out of each group steps forward. A young man wearing shades steps forward first.

"Excuse me." A second boy, a few years older and more serious looking steps forward from the red group. He explains that they're all prefects of Rakuen, from the two battle schools on the island. Fortitude - the boy in the sunglasses and the others dressed in green - and Conquest. They all arrived just like you did, weeks or months before this.

"I know you have many questions but first please come to the person who calls your name."

He looks down on his list to double check "For Conquest, Nanami Kiryuu, Hukaru Hitachiin, Madotsuki and Aria."

"If I call your name," the green-clad boy had stepped forward again, "it means you're with Fortitude, a.k.a the slightly more awesome school. Brittany Pierce, Jules de Ferrier, Izumi and Furiae."

Comments

[moorecowbell]

Nanami is dressed in a cute gold sundress for the moment, and she holds her bag tightly.

"Excuse me," she says. "But while Conquest is by far an appropriate name for any house of someone of the Kiryuu family and since I'm in it OBVIOUSLY the best house, I did NOT sign up for this!"

She folds her arms and huffs. "I'm quite done with swords and fighting over stupid things that don't matter! I demand to know where my..."

She pauses. Brother? ... sister? Brother, no, that person had to be a brother, even if that brother was a she. Were they a she?

"Where my brother is!"

[swordofzero]

Why did Suzaku always get the angry ones. The ones who demanded to be sent back and never listened. "None of us signed up for this, your brother may be here, he may come later or perhaps not. If you give me his name I can check."

[moorecowbell]

"I..."

She bites her lip. She can't remember his name, or his face, or... anything, really. But no one else must know that.

"You wouldn't be worthy to know his name. Tch. And what do you mean, no one signed up? Do these people simply kidnap students from other, more superior boarding schools then?"

[swordofzero]

Really, why did he always get the rude ones. He had been here plenty of times when he was not on duty and people were polite, if scared and worried. "Not just from boarding schools, from everywhere and they bring them here to fight."

[moorecowbell]

"To... fight."

Nanami thinks back to that weird dream on the train, and begins to put two and two together.

"Hold on a moment. Fighting. Let me guess: these fights occur in prescribed duels wherein swords get pulled out of people, yes? And we're all supposed to be dueling for the hand of some vacant-eyed creepy nerd princess who doesn't even deserve to live, because supposedly if we marry her we'll gain ultimate power or some such nonsense?"

[swordofzero]

Suzaku blinked, "Yes... how do you know that? Have you been in a similar situation before?" Then he paused. "Except... there is no princess. Well there is a princess in the strange fairy story they keep telling us but we've never met one and marrying one isn't in the manual..."

[moorecowbell]

She nodded, sharply.

"At the school I come from, Otohori Academy, it used to be that certain members of the student council, including myself, would fight weekly duels for the hand of the Rose Bride. At first we'd only use our own swords, and whoever was currently engaged to the Rose Bride would use a sword drawn from her soul, but later things... changed."

By which she meant, got terribly weird. But that wasn't important.

"Anyway, in the end, someone..."

She frowned. Who? She couldn't remember. It probably wasn't important. "Someone won the Rose Bride, and vanished, I think, and then we didn't have to fight anymore, and the Rose Bride left to look for that person. I don't know if the person who won ever got the power they sought, though. In the end, I suspect it was all a sham, some scheme on the part of our headmaster to trick the winning duelist so he could get something for himself."

She paused.

"If this is the same sort of thing, I'd say don't trust the headmaster, if there is one, and never, ever get in a car with him. Trust me on this. And if he has a sister, get her away from him as soon as you can."

[swordofzero]

Suzaku blinked taking in the information and remembering it to pass onto Lelouch but it did sound very different than here. "There is no headmaster, though there are two headmistresses but they claim to have been brought here just like us. And then remained behind, I don't think they have a sister.

Here they announce five or six people from each school to be Players, they draw the weapons from other people and fight."

[moorecowbell]

Nanami pondered this. So, it wasn't Otohori, but...

"Still, how very peculiar. Here I thought Otohori was the only school to have to put up with such nonsense."

[swordofzero]

"I haven't heard of that school. People here come from many different worlds. There is a girl named Sora who comes from a similar school. I am not sure if it is in your world."

[moorecowbell]

"I've never heard of anyone named Sora."

She sighed.

"Very well. Are you here to show me to my dorm then?"

[swordofzero]

"Oh..." Perhaps it was a different school. He nodded, "I am, according to the list you are in the Red Dorm, in the room I used to be in."

[moorecowbell]

"Very well," she said. "Lead the way."

She held out her bag for him to take, as though he were a servant.

[swordofzero]

Suzaku blinked at the bag, and decided to ignore it instead leading the way. "Our campus is quite close," he told her politely.

[moorecowbell]

She holds it out for a moment longer, then gives an exaggerated sigh and follows after Suzaku. Goodness, how rude!

[swordofzero]

"There are two dorms in each school, in Conquest they are Red and White." He gestured to his uniform to explain the reason. They were soon at the dorm and he gestured at a door. "There is a small living area there, all the bedrooms are upstairs."

[jurist]

Juri had come to the platform out of idle curiosity; she hadn't been expecting to see anyone she knew from home. She especially had not been expecting to hear this particular strident voice echoing through the station. But there was no mistaking it.

Why her? Juri couldn't help wondering. Of all the students at Ohtori, why was it Nanami who'd shown up? Why couldn't it have been someone a little less, well, high-strung? Like Miki, maybe. Or... well, all right, most of the Student Council was hardly any better, Juri had to admit.

Still, a familiar face was a familiar face, and Juri couldn't just ignore her. So she approached Nanami, smiling pleasantly. "What a surprise to see you here."

[moorecowbell]

"Miss Juri!?"

She'd wondered if anyone else she knew was here, but of all people--why not her brother (whoever that was) (was it Juri? No, it couldn't be) or Tsuwabuki or someone useful?

"Are these people kidnapping Student Council members for a chance at the Rose Bride or something?"

If that was the case, then maybe her brother would show. She'd settle for Miki though, he was sensible and easy to deal with.

"They say we're here to duel, but I thought that whole idiocy was over with? And besides, I never understood what the big deal was about stupid nerdy..."

She paused. What was her name? ... didn't matter.

"Stupid nerdy Rose Bride girl with her stupid glasses and her stupid... stupidness."

[jurist]

"Not exactly," Juri began, wondering how best to explain this. "That is, most of the people who have been kidnapped to participate in the duels aren't members of the Student Council, besides you and myself. And there isn't a Rose Bride."

There, she'd let Nanami digest that for a moment before she went on to explain the finer points of how this nonsense worked. To the extent that she understood them, anyway.

[moorecowbell]

She frowned. "So they let the common rabble duel? Like with that whole Black Rose thing? Peculiar. And, if there's no Rose Bride, what's the prize?"

"Something better, I hope?"

[jurist]

"Quite a bit like that Black Rose thing, actually," Juri said. Oh dear, she was going to have to explain about Players and Weapons, wasn't she? She doubted that Nanami was going to take that well.

"As for prizes, they seem to be largely monetary, with penalties for not fighting. There does seem to be some sort of larger goal behind the duels in general, but I haven't quite grasped what it is."

[moorecowbell]

"Ugh, that's just wonderful," she said. "Complete with the getting swords yanked out of you. Fantastic, I so wanted to go through that again..."

She shivered. It hadn't been bad, just... well. Anyway.

"Just money? No, it can't be that. There has to be something behind it all. Even if I never figured out what it was with the duels at school, I just know the chairman had something to do with it... we can't let ourselves be left in the dark again. I won't have it!"

[jurist]

"It's... not very pleasant, is it," Juri said. Which was an understatement, but she wasn't going to dwell on it any more than that.

"I don't think it's only the money, either, but I don't know yet what the true purpose is. Perhaps it has something to do with that story—the one about the princess, the knight and the demon..."