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

[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."

[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?"

[summerstars]

Shaking her head, Grenn frowned.

"Shared dreams aren't dreams... I don't think that was a dream, but what it was then, who knows... There was something it said, my shadow... I don't remember what, but I have a feeling it would explain a lot." She shrugged, a bit helplessly. She'd just have to hope something would jog her memory.

The fingers of her left arm tingled, as if her brain was having trouble being convinced they were there and were rediscovering the nerves... Shaking her hand, Grenn sighed.

[trollofthree]

"A mass hallucination?" Gino rubbed the back of his neck, fingers tangling in braids loosened from a night's sleep. He tugged at one of them in thought. "I don't know about that. It can't have been real, 'cause none of it matches up."

[idkmybffxiao]

"Are those even possible?"

Mass hallucinations. Isn't that what people called things they just couldn't explain? Mei watched Gino fuss with his braids and huffed. "You aren't taking care of them right!" Faced with the thoughts of whether or not them all dying was real, the girl grabbed onto the first distraction to come along.

Gino's hair.

Mei finally let go of him and hopped up to her feet. The movement caused her to cringe and double over a bit, but she steadied herself against the knight. Ghhh, her chest. Breath, breath, alright. She straightened up again and reeeeaaached for the braids.

"So, well, if the weapons can hurt, but aren't real weapons, maybe... maybe it was all fake, too? But in the same way the weapons are?"

[summerstars]

Hiding her face behind her eyes for a moment, because she really didn't want to face this, but she wasn't sure it was a good idea to ignore it either, she sighed. Hands sliding to the sides slightly to grip her hair, Grenn looked up.

"... Doesn't match up? Do you, or don't you, both of you, remember saving me and killing my shadow?" She felt bad about bringing that up, but at least that wasn't a immediately horrible part of the recollections.

[trollofthree]

"Huh. Like a hologram? A game?" Gino frowned. At least before he noticed Mei going for his hair, at which point he huffed another laugh, swung his legs onto the bed and rolled over, so he was lying on his front and the back of his head was significantly lower down.

"Yeah, but it doesn't make sense that I remember killing you twice." Matter-of-fact, cheerful. "What's this about a shadow?"

[idkmybffxiao]

"Hologram?" Mei had heard that word before, but no one had ever stopped to explain what it was. Oh, good, she can reach the braids now! Laying down was the first mistake, because Mei just sat down on his back to go about fixing his hair. At least she's light.

"I remember that, but everything gets kind of muddled after..." She trailed off, her fingers pausing in their task of picking apart the braids, but only briefly.

[summerstars]

Grenn shrugged and looked around the room, rubbing one cheek.

"Could be... And I... well. I don't remember everything either, but." But yes. They didn't need to remember everything, now did they? Even just one instance of 'shared' made it just not possible for it to have been a simple dream. Or nightmare, as the case would be.

"... Shadows... I remmeber mine... It was me, but too unlike me to... To be me." Grenn has to stop, because something twisted in her chest, a not-remembered something. She shook her head. "I remember yours... um... Like shadowed overlay. The real you didn't have that..."

[trollofthree]

Gino rested his chin on his folded hands and let his gaze drop to the spokes of Grenn's wheelchair. His dream hadn't been clear enough to distinguish between the two Grenns, but if he stopped to think about it, he could just about picture the differences. Huh.

"So, what? We all had the same dream?"

[idkmybffxiao]

"We must have. There was something else, too, at the end..." Mei carefully unsnarled bits of hair as she took the braids apart, then set about re-braiding the first one out of the three. "Do either of you remember someone trying to say something?"

[summerstars]

Here, Grenn had to admit defeat; the very end of the dream was muddled at best, overlayed with another, perfectly 'normal' nightmare at worst.

"No... Or... I don't know. There was a lot of garbled voices at the end..." Grenn said with a shrug. She wondered what Mei was thinking of.

[trollofthree]

"Something about a knight, wasn't it?" He didn't sound too sure, but he definitely remembered some kind of ... well, who knows. "Just like a dream I had before. Wouldn't shut up about the 'story' then either."

[idkmybffxiao]

"A story that everybody knows..." It sounded like such a mystery. If it hadn't been for the terrible dying part, this could almost be exciting. She finished Gino's next braid and just as she begun the last, one final recollection from the nightmare came back.

This resulted in the knight's hair getting yanked when she tried to flail in outrage without letting go first.

"The announcer! I put a knife through her head and she just got back up! That cheater!"

[summerstars]

Grenn coughed, trying to hide the laugh, because while it had all been horrible, Mei's outrage was kind of funny.

"Umm... Yeah, that's, uh... the least of it? Another snort. But what really annoyed her was the way their 'narration' insisted everybody knew the story it was telling, because that was just a lie.

"Huhn. Says everybody knows that story... I can hardly remember a word said after their narration is done..."

[trollofthree]

Gino's own laugh was cut off by the yank. He winced, unable to sit up from Meipinning but at least able to reach his neck to nurse his hair when she was done trying to pull it out. He rolled his head sideways, resting it on his remaining wrist, and peered at Grenn through his bangs.

"You're friends with those girls, right? Yuki and Sora and the others. Did they ever talk about it?"

[idkmybffxiao]

"...if I still had my alkahestry, it would've been a pillar through her head," the tiny girl grumbled and got back to finishing the last braid. "Or a statue. I could have dropped a statue on her. Or blew her up." If it sounded like Mei was holding a grudge, that'd be totally correct. She was.

She finished the braid. "There." Now she could look up and add another curious look at Grenn. "Um, but why would Yuki know about the story?"

[summerstars]

Grenn turned to Mei first to give some sort of explanation; that seemed easiest.

"Because they come from a version... or the original version, who knows, of the school," Grenn said with a shrug and then tilted her head in thought. "But no, Yuki's not mentioned anything about it, but then, it didn't really come up..."

[trollofthree]

"Right, and that Sora calls herself a knight, doesn't she? It's definitely not an official title."

He dropped his head back onto his hands when the braids were finished and released, with a muffled, "Thanks." in there somewhere.

[idkmybffxiao]

"You're welcome!"

She heard that, Gino. Mei went on to give Grenn a blank stare. "Different... version?" She had actually been coming to the conclusion that all of these people weren't just Amestrians and other foreigners, but slowly.

[summerstars]

Staring at Mei, Grenn felt embarrassment creep up from her stomach. She didn't know. Grenn looked over at Gino. Did he know? What was she supposed to say now? Tugging on the hair at her side of her face, Grenn blinked and felt a nervous smile flitter over her face.

"Um... This isn't..." Deep breath. Breathe out. Grenn shook her head. "I know I'm not from where Gino is from, for example, Mei. And I'm rather sure you're not from China, so... Yes. Different versions, worlds, whatever you want to say..."

... Had that been clever? Grenn felt like hiding her face in her hands.

[trollofthree]

Gino to the rescue, then. He nodded as well he could, "Right, Xing isn't in the Chinese Federation, but you look like you're from there... You too, Grenn. There are a ton of similarities."

[idkmybffxiao]

"...what's China?"

Staaare.

"What? So... Gino isn't from Amestris?" And Mei couldn't even begin to fathom where Grenn might be from. Somewhere farther south than Xing, she had imagined. "And Suzaku wasn't making things up? There really is somewhere called Britannia?"

Oops. Guess she owed him an apology.

[summerstars]

Grenn wasn't sure if she should feel offended by the connection to China or not, but she shook her head at Mei.

"No. And I don't know what you mean by me being Chinese, Gino, because I'm not. I know the Indian Confederation isn't big, but it's bigger than the Albionian Territories and---" Oops. Facepalming went here. She'd tried so hard to not reveal to much, but it probably didn't matter with Mei or Gino, because from what she'd managed to unearth, their 'realities' didn't line up in the least. So maybe she could relax a bit, at least right here.

It was probably a bigger risk that where Yuki came from could turn out to be her past. Grenn sighed.

"Um, sorry." It was a bit embarrassing, because she hadn't been aware she harboured such vehemence regarding her heritage. But....
"And well, technically, I'm not from India. I've got Indian heritage, yes, but it's hard to be from a country when you were born in space." She had to admit, that was fun to say.

[trollofthree]

"Britannia's where I'm from! Of course it's real," He got out, enthusiasm and sparkles, before Grenn spoke. He blinked. Opened his mouth to explain how large the Chinese Federation was, blinked again. His mouth snapped shut.

"Space? You weren't born on Earth?"