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

[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?"

[idkmybffxiao]

"Well how was I s'posed to know that! I didn't know we were from different worlds!"

Okay. Mei got the 'different but similar worlds' part. The kid has a vast imagination, so surpassing that weird is fairly simple. When Grenn brings up 'space', however, one can almost see the metaphorical question marks popping up around her head.

"Space?" She echoed Gino's question.

[summerstars]

... Hm... Maybe that hadn't been the smartest of things to say, but... too late now.

"No... I've not seen Earth in my whole life, Gino. And I probably won't unless something extraordinary happens." Grenn shrugged. She didn't really pick up on Mei's complete confusion. She simply thought she was surprised that she'd mentioned space at all.

[trollofthree]

"Huh." He sounded far too thoughtful, "That explains why your engines don't run on sakuradite, anyway. Where are you from, if you're not on Earth?"

[idkmybffxiao]

"Waitwaitwait. What's space?"

Mei, not getting it. Not at all.

[summerstars]

Grenn blinked at Mei, because she'd think the concept of 'space' was a pretty universal one. Or... But Gino first.

"Space station, Gino. I've lived on one or another my whole life." That was probably detailed enough... even if they all were from different worlds/versions, she still wasn't sure how much she should say.

"Mei... Space is..." A pause. "Will it matter if I try to explain it? I mean, you sure you didn't know this before?"

[trollofthree]

Bizarre. He knew, vaguely, that occasionally some scientist or group would make a huge deal about sending up a rocket, but nothing ever came of it. Especially not when they were in a state of world war. Science projects took second place at that point.

Therefore, Gino knew nearly nothing about it. It wasn't just for Mei that he gestured for her to continue.

"It's a good distraction, right?"

[idkmybffxiao]

Even without memory loss, the concept of 'space' had no frame of reference for her. Not for how they defined it. "It's... an... expanse in which..." No, no, they went over this back home. She knew a definition. "All objects are located aaaand all events occur?"

Yep. That was what space was. What the other two meant sounded like something completely different, though.

"But that means everyone lives in space." Which doesn't clear this up at all. Mei won't even touch the entire 'not living on Earth' or 'space station' stuff yet.

[summerstars]

Shaking her head, Grenn Shook her head.

"The space I mean is the.... uh..." She wasn't sure what Mei knew and didn't know, even factoring in my game-related memory loss... "Right... There's lots of planets, right? Not just the one you or I or Gino counts as home, but others. They all occupy a air-less 'space', circling their suns, and so on..." Trailing off, Grenn frowned. She wasn't good at explanations, and wasn't sure that had been a good one.