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

[defender]

"Then that means..."

Shoujou trails off, pressing a hand to his forehead as though it would help him remember. He remembers -- Kuchinawa had been wounded -- he shot El -- El was falling -- he shot El? "That all... happened?"

It's the only logical explanation, but he shakes his head. "That's impossible. I could never have killed..."

[bitofafiction]

"Considering I remember being killed myself,"

(blue fur—pain raking down his chest—crunch of broken bone)

"I doubt it is as simple as that."

[defender]

Looking at Sherlock makes Shoujou recall their first conversation, and the question raised in it -- who is behind this? Sherlock had called them a conspiracy of sadists, but they could not be Iwahijiri...

Shoujou tries to recall if he died, but the "dream" is simply a vague blur now.

"They did something to us," he says darkly, finally working up the nerve to slide out of his bed to get dressed for the day. "For their amusement. Or something more. Either way, we're all alive now."

[trollofthree]

"Hey, what kind of question is that?" Gino laughed; he kept his tone flippant and his movements slow as he patted her on the head, ruffling her hair slightly. "I wasn't planning on it."

She didn't look reassured. He paused, "What about, let's see... okay, I promise I won't, if you do the same. Sound good? No killing for either of us!"

[idkmybffxiao]

A fairly good one, considering what happened. Mei cringed at the pat on her head and almost retreated back under the covers, but she stopped when he kept talking. The girl stared a while longer, then blinked.

"A promise?" No killing for either of them. In actuality, that might be hard to keep with the entire school being obsessed with fighting, but right now? It sounded good to Mei. "A-alright..." She looked down. "I'm s-s... sorrryyyyy!" A flurry of motion followed. Mei went from hidden under all those covers to clinging to Gino and just sobbing away into his shirt. Anything she tried to say after the apology was more or less a jumbled mess of words that made no sense with all that crying.

[frozen_desires]

As his other roommates chattered and tried to make sense of what had apparently been a shared night of bad nightmares, Tougyu simply laid in his bed with his eyes shut. He felt ill, he felt haunted and he felt... bloodthirsty. He wanted to dig his nails into flawless skin, rend flesh with a blade, tear someone's throat out with his goddamned teeth-!

Enough.

That wasn't him. That part would never be him. Even if he was a monster, cannibal had never been on his list of horrifying adjectives. No, that was something... else. Something that had also been part of the vivid dream. He couldn't dwell on this anymore, he should find the other members of the SC. Slowly opening his eyes, he didn't even so much as glance at the others as he shoved the blankets away from him and got up, making for the bathroom.

[themouthofhell]

The Demon King always returned. Didn't he?

Oichi awakes with a start, sitting bolt upright in her bed. She shakes and distantly feels as though she may be sick. The room is as it always is, so she lays back down. Closes her eyes. The stench of death is still there, heavy and thick. A dream, she tells herself, but the quivering in her fingers does not go away. The darkness of her closed eyes is a comfort, but for the first time, sleep seems scary.

So she opens them. Kotarou is there, she notes, and she shifts up in her bed, sits and strokes his hair. He'd been dead. She'd been all alone, fire everywhere, and it had been just like that time. That time... she starts to remember, just a little bit, something feeling familiar but not solid.

But he's here now, alive and sleeping. Kotarou is alive and that girl is likely alive as well. The memories of her dream already feel distant, faint, and she hates that. Too many of her memories are as a wisp of smoke. The announcement sounds, but she doesn't hear it.

The Demon King always returned. Didn't he?

She thinks of her brother, and can't remember his face or name. Tears build up in her eyes but do not fall just yet.

[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?"

[summerstars]

Grenn wasn't sure how to handle this. She wasn't even sure what she'd meant to do by trying to find Gino (he'd already left the dorm) and Mei (where she found both Gino and Mei in her dorm), but she paused in the already-open doorway and felt awkward.

What do you say to your killers? But they hadn't killed her, had they? Her recollections of the 'dream' are muddled at points, especially when she's talking to... to.. that version of herself. The shadow. The twisted, technology-changed shadow version. But any other shadow is kind of layered above the real person. But she also remembered that the ones who were 'real' in her dream didn't have an overlay. It's like programs layered above each other, one corrupted, the other not.

"... Um. Hey. How bad---" What was she even supposed to say? She hesitantly steered into the room and stared at the bundle of blanket-covered Mei clinging to Gino.
"Dreams are sweet, nightmares not so... But no matter which you had this night, and even if were they real for once; breathe easy, child, we all awaken when the moon is low..." She had no idea how the old poem her parents used to tell their children when they came to them woken from nightmares had popped up just then, but it did.

Even more hesitantly, she stretched out a hand and patted Mei's head.

[stopwatch]

"Brother!"

Rolo had awoken early, pacing the room until Lelouch also woke up. His mind, all that while, had been on the nightmare; it was a mess as twisted as his brother's bedsheets and Rolo could make no sense of it. It was just a dream, ultimately, and he did not worry too much over it; not knowing that everyone else shared a similar dream.

But now that Lelouch is awake, Rolo pads after him, already dressed.

[hairwag]

"M-morning." Tomoko choked out the response, though it was a struggle. Then she let out a struggling gasp for air. She had been holding her breath without even realizing. Her heart was still pounding so hard she was near positive it was going to bust out of her chest. She was feeling the same terror that she hadn't felt since Sora had saved her on that fateful day back at her school. But she couldn't let this terror control her.

She lowered her hands from her head, and shifted, so she was sitting on the edge of the bed, silently watching Kallen and Molly. She had to be strong. Strong like one of Himoto-san's weapons should be. Stronger than the girl in that lifelike dream, the one who had...

"I think I'm going to be sick." She whispered.

[myownfuture]

Reiko wasn't about to stop him if he needed to change his clothes; that was the last thing she needed to see after the dream she'd just had. That boy who looked like Shoujou followed after Lelouch, and Reiko collapsed back down onto her bed, face-up.

Did they really have to go to the lobby? She had a bad feeling about this.

[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?"

[womenwouldgrieve]

Hearing one of the others speak, Edgar turns around. He's about to shrug off Scott's question when he sees the woman, tears welling up in her eyes, looking oh so distraught.

"I don't know," he replies -- ignoring the question would be rude -- and then strides over to the side of the woman's bed and looks down to her. "...are you all right?"

[tenwholeryou]

"Ichi." Kotarou doesn't move much, too tired and too frightened to do anything but curl around her knees. It's comforting, having his hair stroked, and he remembers telling Nanashi, "to banish bad dreams, think of better times, and hold onto something dear to you." Is that what they are? Dear to each other? He wouldn't mind that.

When the man approaches, he eyes him distrustfully, like a wary guard-dog, and hunches closer to Oichi.

[leftthesafetyon]

Hey, she was trying to be polite; She couldn't help it if her roommates could hear her alarm too. Whether or not it had anything to do with yet another dream about being shot, it was irritating to end up sleeping in.

"Well, that's one way of putting it." In truth, she attended class for a grand total of two days before realizing that it was the same stuff she already learned. She was probably one of the most truant students around, and spent her time investigating instead.

[myownfuture]

Reiko sighed. There was no way she was getting back to sleep, was there? She sat up and ran a hand through her hair. The curls were starting to straighten out by now, she'd have to touch them up.

"Why?" she asked simply.

[leftthesafetyon]

Reiko could ignore her and go back to bed whenever she wanted, no matter how irritating Meryl was being.

"..." She wasn't sure if she should spit it out and say she was investigating the place. What would this kid even say? Instead, she decided to be a bit more vague. "Time is precious."

[trollofthree]

"Oi..." Gino blinked down at Mei, arms lifting away from her until he slumped a little, huffed and brought them back around her and the bundle of blankets both. What was it with the crying? Molly and Tomoko had been in tears too, and Kallen had been, before she'd turned into their room's mother. He'd mostly wanted to put his fist through a wall. Of course, crying would be a little less self-destructive, but he didn't think it'd have the same level of satisfaction.

But when he absently clenched a fist against Mei's back, it was caught and unfolded again by Grenn, who had somehow managed to arrive unnoticed in the commotion of Mei's sobbing. He started, but let her take that hand and gave her a weak grin as a bonus for the successful sneak attack and weird poem.

"What was that? A kids' song?"

[idkmybffxiao]

The sobbing subsided, tapering off to just sniffling, and then nothing at all. Mei looks towards Grenn. When did she get here? Not that it mattered. It was good to see she was alright, too. "Th-that's nice," she managed an understandable reply to the poem.

Even though the crying has finally come to an end, Gino's going to have the little girl clinging to him for awhile yet. It's comforting, regardless of who it is. She did let go with one hand, to free it up, and wiped the tears off her face with a sleeve.

"...sorry," she mumbles again, voice somber. "It... it's not like anyone really..." But it had seemed so real. How could it just have been a nightmare? "Is everyone else okay?"

[summerstars]

Grenn shrugged at Gino, a bit embarrassed to have recited it herself. She hadn't heard it in years (since she was... what, six?) really...
"... My parents used to, um, recite it to us when we woke from nightmares. I don't know where it's from," Grenn said, still feeling distinctly embarrassed that she'd randomly recited poetry.

"Everyone in my room was." Then she paused, grimaced and took the hand on Mei's head away to rub at her left upper arm. "If you want to consider, uh, mental trauma to be 'okay'."

[trollofthree]

Well, that was fine. He shifted until he was in less danger of toppling back off the bed, and patted her back, a little awkwardly. His own shoulders still ached from ... what? Something. There were no scars or wounds, he'd checked, but that didn't change anything.

"Same here," he tilted his head at Grenn, one shoulder rolling into a semi-shrug. Did she have the same problem with her arm? "But man, everyone's pretty shaken up."

[allurprincess]

"Tougyu," she called after him, not moving away from Yuki in the slightest, but half-lifting her free hand anyway. Even he looked shaken. She wondered, blankly, if everyone would be feeling the same. "Did you-- ah..." Did you have a bad dream too? was what she wanted to ask, but it sounded so stupid like that.

[idkmybffxiao]

"Um, but... was it even a nightmare? If everyone remembers it?" Mei still wasn't sure what to make of all of that, besides the obvious 'it was horrible, going to have nightmares forever' part. "Though it couldn't have been real if everyone is alright. I think... everyone died. Why would they do something like that?"

[isur2ndprincess]

Yuki looked up at Tougyu but didn't say anything to him. What could she say? They were all shaken. She knew the possibility of them all having a horrible dream at the same time was slim, and that was equally as unnerving. Could that have happened? What's the possibility of that?