Round 1 [beta characters here]

[utopiamods]

And then you woke up and it was all a dream.

Or... was it?

You don't know. The details are fading. Some of it seems as clear as if if had happened minutes ago, whilst the rest is as hazy and vague as a long-lost memory. You remember blood and screams; a girl with a bright smile. Need to get rid of you, someone said. For a little while. Sometimes you were running, fighting, facing dark shadows with red eyes and mocking smiles. Sometimes you were hunting yourself, hurting people, feeling the power of your weapon coursing through you as you headed towards your prey. Sometimes you were watching your friends die, or your family, or your enemies.

Your shadow is you, and you are your shadow, and its voice is all around you.

Free us. Free them.

Static. More images, some you will remember and some you will not.

...but, your shadow whispers, the Demon King always returned. Didn't he?

You are outside, and the sky is blood. The towers glow, humming atonally as a star lights up the sky. The campus blazes with its light; the lines of the symbol span the horizon, and a tiger smiles.

Once, the knight despaired and sought a sage...

The tiger smiles, and the world is consumed in fire. You're falling, falling, and the shadow's voice falls with you.

There is a story everybody knows.

Light streams through the windows of your room. In eight different rooms, in four different buildings, thirty-nine students wake up with a start, and find their campus as picturesque and empty as it was the day before.

The day before? What...

A cheery voice breaks through the fog of confusion, loud over the speaker system.

"Good morning, students! Please be at the lobby by midday for the week's announcements."

Comments

BLACK 1-B

[myownfuture]

Reiko stirred from her sleep and stared up at the ceiling, half in shock. She usually didn't remember her dreams, but this one stood out. So vivid... where it wasn't too blurry to remember. So bizarre.

After a few moments, she sat up and put a hand to her head. But... it had just been a dream, right? And yet somehow, she felt apprehensive about "reporting to the lobby".

Re: BLACK 1-B

[veepofchess]

A thud on the floor next to her signalled the awakening of a certain emperor. All that was visible in the twisted sheets was a shock of black hair. It began to shift and move as the person that typically slept in that bed emerged from his fabric cocoon. He looked annoyed as he sat up and pushed his hair out of his face.

He remembered a lot of it. That Chinese girl. Gino. Rolo. Suzaku at his side. Nunnally's body. He looked absently into the distance, running it all back through his mind.

He kicked the blankets away and got to his feet. He gathered up his blankets and began reassembling his bed. All the while, his mind seemed to be on his nightmares.

Re: BLACK 1-B

[myownfuture]

"Lelouch...?"

Reiko got to her feet, looking down in bemusement at the fallen emperor as he pushed himself up. "Um... are you all right?"

Re: BLACK 1-B

[leftthesafetyon]

"Hey which one of you turned off my alarm clock?"

She looked at her clock before proceeding. Something wasn't right- her alarm was set for five, and yet, here she was, much later in the morning. That weird dream about getting shot? It can wait until she finds out why she slept in.

[myownfuture]

"It wasn't me," Reiko grumbled, though she was in fact sick and tired of being woken up at five every morning. "Are you that desperate to get to class?"

Black 1-A

[tenwholeryou]

The moment he wakes from the nightmare, Kotarou scrambles out of bed. It's unfamiliar, and too big, and there are other people in the room. He wants to find somewhere smaller, somewhere darker, to hide for however long it takes to get rid of the screams and the smell of blood; he's looking for a way out, he finds Oichi instead. Suzaku's there too, still sleeping, but Kotarou remembers him dying, somehow, which is strange and upsetting, and he's going to go over to Ichi. He doesn't see death when he sees her, his half-asleep mind associates her only with safety. Dazed, panicking, he climbs onto the end of her bed, and curls up at her feet.

He sleeps there until the announcement.

[womenwouldgrieve]

Had that little boy always been in this dorm? Edgar can't recall ever having seen him before.

Right now Edgar is sitting on the edge of his bed, looking around at the others in the room... that little boy, a woman whose name he absolutely had to find out, and two other boys he didn't know, but who he'd noticed in this room before. (If only he'd arrived earlier in the previous round.) They are sleeping peacefully, it seemed; clearly, they hadn't had the same disturbing dream Edgar had just had. It was so vivid and strange; he doesn't know what to make of it.

Either way, he's stood up and is about ready to leave the room when the announcement comes through.

[scott_pilgrim]

It's not often that Scott is disturbed by a dream. But last night (?) was different. And with a slight start, Scott sits up, frowning. "Man... that was weird, " he mumbled, before flopping back into bed. "Anybody else feel like--"
And then he hears the announcement, and sits back up. "Do... do I have to?"

Yes, Scott. You have to. With a look around, he notices the person about to leave. Hm. Maybe he should follow him, or look at the other people in the room. Oddly enough, he'd never really looked around his own dorm at this time.

[monkeystail]

She'd never woken up from being dead, but if this was what it felt like, she didn't want to do it again. And she wasn't in the 'hideout'. Jerking upright, Huashi glared around the room, at the still-sleeping bodies in the other beds.

Kotarou!

If she was here, he must be... Amusingly enough (and probably good if there was anyone else up early enough to see the monkey girl dash from one dorm building to another) there was an extra full set of uniform in the drawers beside the bed. Her clothes weren't of much use anymore, so she changed, and then dashed out. But not through the corridors, but out the window and clambered down the side; she had no use for corridors and stairs.

Staring in through the window (we shall hope no one in Black 1-A was awake as of yet...) Huashi was relieved to see he was fine. Sleeping, and fine. She grinned at his curled-up little body and then took herself down the side of the building, and took off for the forest. She needed some greenery about her.

She wished daddy was here.

White 1-A

[summerstars]

Grenn woke up to the announcement, grabbing at her left shoulder. The arm was still there. She stared down at her perfectly fine, and attached, arm, and felt dizzy. How...

"Remember this when you push replay!" Remember what exactly? Because there was something she'd forgotten. Not something that had been taken away, just something that was eluding her memory (unfortunately, her/her shadow's memory of, uh... accosting... Yuki were perfectly fine, thank you very much not).

Replay? But this didn't seem like any of the days before... Grabbing her head and trying to think, all that came were vague echoes of spattered blood, of Mei hitting the pillar, and the comment she'd made to Koharu about that the girls from the real Utopia should attempt to hack the system.

[snakesonaprincess]

Tsuki awoke with a start, her hand immediately going to her chest. She couldn't remember exactly why, or what had caused it... but she was nonetheless immediately relieved as she confirmed the lack of any wound, the absence of any physical pain. But... why?

The sense of relief quickly faded as she glanced around. Was she back at her original school, or was this still the imitation? As she noticed the other figures still there, it could be quickly obvious where she was. The sinking feeling in her gut only tightened, though she had to admit it was almost absurd. She actually wanted to return to that place, one she hated so much?

But compared to this one... her brow furrowed as images of things that had passed began to pass through her mind. But just as quickly they faded. Tsuki had never been one to dwell on dreams; they were just that, and once awake they were best discarded and forgotten. Yes, this nightmare was the same. It was something she needed to move on from, not cling to.

[summerstars]

Grenn lookd up as Tsuki awoke, and, while at first she felt reticient to ask, she knew she needed to start somewhere because after the hazy bit with the tiger and the voices had been a last, haunting, static-filled hiss; "How do you share dreams? And if you do, what are they then?" They weren't dreams, but her head ached.

"Tsuki... Did you... dream of shadows of ourselves?" Grenn wasn't sure if the word should be 'dream', her mind was trying to grab onto something else, but it would have to do for now.

[dancingflames]

It was a sickening feeling, having her uniform melt into her flesh, her blood boil as the sadistic tiger took her life.

Mai awoke with a start and a gasp into a much more peaceful world. (Hopefully, more peaceful, at least.) It was all a dream? Or nightmare, anyway...

She looked around the room, seeing that, in fact, all her roommates were accounted for and in their regular forms and not those of burnt flesh and cracked bones. A promising sign, but the nightmare's lingering sensations could not be banished from her mind.

RED 1-A

[allurprincess]

"A story everybody knows."

Sora stared up at the ceiling, and tried to stop her body from shaking. That dream... Everyone. Tsuki.

Tsuki.

She felt, vaguely, like she was going to throw up. She knew that she should get up, if only to see if Yuki was alright or to find her friends, but her body wouldn't obey her. Instead, she turned her head. There was Yuki, asleep, with a slight frown. Across the room, Tougyu. Russel, Romeo. All alive, all safe. She let her head roll back, and concentrated on breathing.

Re: RED 1-A

[chainedbyred]

Russel suddenly shot upright in bed, shouting his brother's name. He looked panicked for a moment, before his setting sank in. The tiger was gone. He was back in bed. Back in the school. He scrubbed his face with his hand. His hair was a wreck, and his sheets all bunched up. He looked around, and it appeared that only Sora was awake. "Hey," he called over to her.

[allurprincess]

Sora blinked. Sat up, slowly, because her body ached and sparked with imaginary pains, and looked over at him.

"Russel?"

PALE 1-A

[greennotgold]

Fletcher slowly came to, clutching at his bedsheets and staring up at the ceiling as he recalled the dream.

Running, hiding, attacking someone... He'd shot Molly, he'd tried to shoot Russel, and then...

...and then the part that he somehow knew to be the worst part of it all, that was blurry. Pain, so much pain, but why? Where was it coming from? He groaned and sat up. It was just a dream, right? It had to be.

[forthward]

Nunnally blinked as she realised she was... in. her. dorm? Letting out a panicked breath, she stared out at nothing. What-- had happened? Images of memories flowed in and out of her vision and she reached up to rub her eyes to try and make them go away. So much screaming, there'd been blood-- Sister Euphemia-- Euphemia had been hurt! She'd hurt her! No, she couldn't have, she'd never do that. She had heard her brother too, but it was all just so vague, fading away.

She curled her fingers in her bedsheets, trying to calm her breathing and hoping to everything that it'd just been a dream. A horrible dream.

[greennotgold]

Fletcher looked over and saw Nunnally lying awake in the bed beside him. She looked rather upset too, from his vantage point.

"N...Nunnally?"

WHITE 1-B

[bitofafiction]

Sherlock snaps awake as though he has just been electrocuted.

He feels better-rested than he can remember being in a long time; the jumbled events of an unusually incoherent nightmare mingle with his memories of the past few days, flashing through his mind all at once; he pulls his left hand out of the blankets and stares at it, searching for the slightest mark that might corroborate that particular narrative.

He remembers dying. Twice. He remembers every sensory detail of every injury he received on that hellish afternoon. He remembers hearing Tony's voice; there is some confusion as to whether he was the one who spoke it. He remembers a slice of coherent light across his visual field and the smell of charred meat.

All of this takes up the space in his head that would otherwise be reserved for panic at this juncture. He gets out of bed sedately enough; no purpose would be served by bolting from the room.

[defender]

For his part, Shoujou has been awake since daybreak. He simply hasn't felt the need to do anything since then; he can't remember anything clearly, nothing truly coherent, but there is one phrase he can't forget.

God is dead.

Staring at the ceiling, that is the one phrase Shoujou can't get out of his mind: God is dead, God is dead, God is dead. Which means -- El is dead. But that's impossible; El cannot be dead. El simply cannot be dead. So then what?

God is dead.

He is pretty damn sure Nietzsche has nothing to do with it.

When Sherlock stirs, Shoujou rises from his own bed to blink blearily at his dorm mate. "Sherlock Holmes."

PALE 1-B

[queenscheckmate]

This wasn't real.

This wasn't real.

Kallen woke up, heart rate through the roof, tears running down the side of her face, her hands clutching at the sheets, her own scream still ringing in her ears. Blue eyes scanned the ceiling and the room furiously. Her throat was hoarse from screaming (soundless and the one from when she woke up, definitely audible). She heard the cheery voice summoning all the students to the lobby. That sound like the girl who delivered the message before. The one who started all this.

Her eyes slammed shut. No, she was dead. And if this was some sort of warped dream, she was supposed to wake up in her bed. At home. She wasn't supposed to be here then and wasn't supposed to be here now. All she could think about was the blood she-- no her shadow-- had spilled. People's blood were on her hands. The shadows didn't have blood, but humans... people... they did.

The teenager turned over and attempted to go back to sleep. If she slept again, maybe she could get out of this 'dream'. At least, it was a nice thought.

[trollofthree]

At the scream, Gino had - well, not moved, but at least his eyes were open now. He lay with his arms behind his head, face turned just enough that his expression was visible. It didn't look like he was disturbed at all, unless you had met him before and knew to be alarmed by his total lack of a smile. He watched her for a moment, then sat up just as she turned over.

"Bad dream?"

It was just loud enough to carry, though he didn't really need to bother after her yell.

RED 1-B

[idkmybffxiao]

There was blood everywhere... it had hurt so much... w-why was.. why would he do that? Why?

And then she was awake, safe and sound, in a bed. Mei clutched at her chest, but she found it whole. No blood, no gaping wound that should be there, but the memory remained. Parts of it were a muddle. There had been something about the announcer and then somewhere in it, she had been dragging someone around. Who that had been, it escaped her, but Mei wouldn't be worried by those. When they had gone to save Grenn and... and...

That stood out in her mind's eye, down to the very last detail.

The girl pulled the blankets back over her and curled up under them, trying to muffle her sobbing from the rest of the dorm room. Just thinking about it, she couldn't stop herself from crying. Her dying was too vivid. It hadn't been a dream. It hadn't, but, oh, how she wishes it were, so it could just fade away like the rest.

[trollofthree]

No one answered when he knocked, so Gino assumed that it was safe to enter. That would normally be a dangerous assumption to make, but, one, it was Mei's room and they were used to him by now and, two, the only thing audible through the door was crying. He huffed, but pushed the door open and padded over to the bundle of covers that was his ex-Player.

"Oi, Mei..."