rakuen | [Round Zero: part 1]

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[Round Zero: part 1]

At noon on the rest day, every screen in the campus lights up. It's the girl from the introduction again! She's grinning fit to burst, and her voice is bright and excited.

"Good morning, everyone! Round Minus-One is now officially over, so we'd like you to all report to the lobby for a special announcement, immediately! It starts in ten minutes, so don't be late."

The screens all go blank, before simply displaying the flashing text ALL STUDENTS REPORT TO THE LOBBY FOR 12:10.

Reaching the lobby, you find it empty of the usual staff. However, the doors to the tramstation are blocked by a large stage, spanning the entire south wall. In the centre stands the girl, in the flesh and just as sickeningly cheerful as her broadcast.

"Hi, everyone!" She waves, tilting sideways as she does so, and then clasps her hands together. "Wow, it's really great to see you all in person at last! You've all tried a lot harder this week, and it shows! We're really, really impressed with everyone. Ah, even though there was a bit of cheating..." she pouts, and shakes her head lightly, "But that's okay. We forgive you! You all know better now.

"But what we've called you here to say is this! We've been working extra hard too, and we've gotten a lot done with your help. So much that we're nearly ready for Round One!

"However..."

She's still smiling. It's a little unnerving, "We have to do some maintenance first, okay? And I'm afraid it would be a problem if you were all alive for that... you could cause us a lot of problems. So we're going to get rid of you for a little while. Think of this as a final test!"

She snaps her fingers, and your shadows disappear. No, not disappear. That's the wrong word. It's more like... they're abandoning you. Nearly forty pools of darkness flow up onto the stage, and suddenly explode upwards in tendrils and globs of black. The girl laughs as they finish changing, as they take on your shapes. As they reach into themselves and pull out inky replicas of your own weapons. They all laugh with her, in the emotionless tones of the Voice from your dreams.

"You can all draw your own weapons now, okay? Fight hard!"

[mod notice: NOW EVERYONE NEEDS TO READ THIS OOC POST BEFORE THEY REPLY.]

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Suzaku caught up with them and they followed Lelouch. In their bout of running, something... no, someone caught her eye. It might have been a flash of a moment, but Kallen's eyesight was damn good.

"Sulu!" the teenager yelled out to him. Hopefully he got the hint to follow because there's wasn't enough time to sit and chit chat. Granted, the lieutenant might have been an outsider by their standards, but he was another person and power... happened to come with numbers.

Head whipping around at the sound of his name, Hikaru spares his own fight just a few seconds of precious concentration to locate the speaker. He's in pure fighting mode right now, a deadly mix of army-level training and expert training in his preferred method of battle. A lot of it is muscle memory and basic instinct but it's no weak fight he's putting up here. And with a foil. Once he's found the body attached to the voice he's following, shadow chasing after.

"Kallen!" he calls, but doesn't say more. It's recognition, affirmation, not a question.

As they ran, something had noticed them, and that something was now following from above.

You could tell this by the steady drip drip of blood falling around them. After a few seconds, the shadow of the Knight of Three apparently grew bored of following them, and swooped down to block their path. The black Tristan was held loosely in one hand, the tip still slick with blood, but his other hand...

"Hey, Suzaku," the name was drawn out, playful but cruel, "Check it out. I finished the job for you~!"

Carelessly, he threw Gino's corpse at their feet, the boy's eyes blank and his throat slit.

Edited (html fail) 2011-01-25 02:13 (UTC)

Suzaku brought his hand up to his head wondering what the dripping was. They were inside, it couldn't be raining, he brought his hand down, it came away red...

He looked round at the sound of his name and instantly wished he hadn't, it was a shadow and it was Gino. Except it wasn't it was a dark twisted version of Gino and the real Gino was flying towards him; he was most definatly dead.

Suzaku's mind went blank, this couldn't be happening... Gino was dead... He was going to kill that monster. But that monster was wearing his dead friends face... No! This thing had killed his friend. With a snarl of pain and anger he rushed forward thrusting his sword up angrily. The shadow though was just out of reach... "No!"

Kallen stopped before the Knight of Round jumped from his location. In the heat of battle, it was hard to stay calm but her battle senses were just going haywire. She just had happened to pick up the shadow in the midst of it. Not only that, she had hear that constant dripping noise and she had a good idea it wasn't water.

And when she saw Gino's body thrown in front of them, she confirmed it.

It was blood.

She saw Suzaku lunge at Gino and she knew this was anything but good. She was emotional. Damn she felt horrible even. She couldn't do anything for him. Not just because he was out of sight when the chaos happened, but that she let her anger get in the way and she didn't even seek him out.

"Suzaku!" She yelled after him. He was being rash. She put a hand on his shoulder and pulled him back, standing in front of him.

"You're letting your emotions get the best of you. That's no good in a fight, you know that."

Lelouch, on the other hand, didn't have the fastest physical reflexes. He saw it coming, and he knew it was going to hit him, but he just couldn't get out of the way. And so, there was the body of a strong, nearly 7 foot teenager on top of him, and both of them on the floor. He was a sitting duck like this. He pushed to get him off. "Dammit!" he growled.

While Lelouch struggled with the body, two feet stopped by his head. Perhaps it was someone to help him? Ah ha, no. That wasn't so. Dark Mei, a shadow copy of the cheerful little girl Lelouch may have seen tagging along around the campus with Gino before this entire nightmare, crouched down next to him, her arms folded across her knees.

It looked like the shadows mimicked reality, since here she is, still tagging along with a Gino. Though she has managed to get quite a bit of... uh... red on her... by this point. It really clashed with the perfectly innocent smile on her face.

"Hi!"

"Go away," he growled, wriggling out from under the body. Out of his periphery, he saw Kallen and Suzaku distracted by the dark Gino. Once his chest was free, he began to pull his sword out. It was long, and this was close quarters, but it was all he had.

"Oops. What do you think you're doing with that?"

The shadow child moved with the speed and precision of a martial artist, which, well, she was, to catch Lelouch's wrist before he could get the sword out too far. "You don't need that! The people you were supposed to protect are already dead!" Mei's smile never faltered. She may as well have been talking about a puppy.

When his wrist was stopped, he went back to his first strategy of getting the dead weight off. No pun intended. The fact that it was a dead body didn't even bother him. It was the fact that it was encumbering him so much. "What are you talking about?! Release me!" he snapped. But the order was pointless. He couldn't get his contacts off like this.

He couldn't see anything but legs, pants, and skirts, some dark, some normal, all scurrying in different directions. He didn't see wheels, that was for sure.

Even if the order was pointless, Dark Mei let go of his wrist and stood. She checked her sleeves for something and frowned, then turned away briefly from Lelouch's struggles to make a gesture with a hand, like she was calling something over.

Ah. She was.

Three kunai of shadow came flying back to her, yanked out of whatever poor sap she'd stuck them in last. She caught them between her fingers and looked back down at Lelouch. "Don't be dumb! I thought you were smart?" The shadow child giggled. "Your sisters, silly! They died! It was sooo terrible!"

Finally, Lelouch kicked his way out from under the body. He was smeared with Gino's blood now, not that it fazed him.

Until she said that. He froze. He stared at her. For a moment, his mind completely shut off. All strategy was gone. All he could think of was Nunnally and Euphemia. He should have told Suzaku to protect them. If his head were clearer, he'd know that there hadn't been opportunity to order them to do anything in this chaos. This was no battlefield, it was a slaughterhouse.

He didn't even recover enough of himself to respond to her.

Oh. Did he break?

The shadowy little girl inched closer and reached to tug on his sleeve. "...hello?" Huh. The smile faded and the shadow managed to look sympathetic. "Aww. C'mon. Maybe it missed them!" Without further ado, Dark Mei grabbed ahold of one of Lelouch's wrists again and turned to drag him off towards the wreckage of Nunnally's wheelchair.

...and further away from his entourage.

"Let's go, let's go! This way!"

Being dragged snapped Lelouch back to reality. "You're a liar! Let me go!" he roared as he struggled to get to his feet. But she had him off balance, and his shoes only squeaked uselessly on the floor.

She drags him all the way to the smoking wreckage and lets go of him, immediately putting a safe distance between herself and Lelouch. He was angry! He might do something.

"No way! I don't lie! Just look~"

If the thought of it had broken him before, here, he's utterly shattered. He stays on the floor, shaking. He reaches up toward the chair, and touches her leg. She is still faintly warm, but there is no mistaking it.

His eyes flew over her body. Something had cut through the motor of her chair. That probably immobilized her. Then the death blow. She'd been hunted by one of these monsters.

They were going to pay.

And Euphemia... the blood in her pink hair a few feet away said enough.

His whole body shook with rage. There was nothing, nothing left for him. Euphemia and Nunnally were dead. Kallen and Suzaku, no matter how strong they were, wouldn't stand long against the emotional warfare these creatures were capable of unleashing. And Rolo... he had no idea where he was.

He slowly got to his feet. He started pulling out his sword again, muttering to himself, "Utopia is..." he paused. "A LIE!" he shouted, jerking the sword out of himself.

If it was blood these people wanted, it was blood they were going to get.

Another sibling. Of course.

Sherlock finds it more difficult than he expected to straighten up from where he is leaning against the wall nearby. It was only going to be for a moment. He hesitates, watching Lelouch and the shadow girl, fairly sure that he should intervene but not entirely sure that he can.

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pfft what continuity.

Gino! You killed Gino! Now Gino you shall die!

lmao orz

Re: lmao orz

HI WHATS GOIN ON IN THIS THREAD 8D

Re: HI WHATS GOIN ON IN THIS THREAD 8D

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/makes a separate thread while Mei kills your shared boyfriend

Re: /makes a separate thread while Mei kills your shared boyfriend

You called?

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Pain!

Re: Pain!