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

[allurprincess]

She didn't ask if Yuki wanted to talk about it; just freed her arm from the covers and held her, fingers still shaking slightly on Yuki's shoulder.

"Do you mind if we get everyone else before..." The idea of going to the lobby made her stomach churn with fear again, and she trailed off.

[isur2ndprincess]

When Sora put her arm around her, Yuki leaned a bit heavier on her, taking comfort in the fact that Sora was there. She knew that Sora would want to check on the others, Yuki wanted to also, but at the moment she wasn't ready to leave the bed.

[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.

[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.

[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?

[frozen_desires]

"Mind your own business." Tougyu replied in a dull voice as he ambled his way towards the door and nearly slipped on the rug under his feet. He was a ball of nerves, just like the rest of them. How could he not be when he was still seeing flashes of gushing red, metal chains tightening around his body and squeezing...

Shit-! He slammed his fist against the wall and growled like a rabid dog. Nightmare or whatever the hell this was, it needed to leave him alone. He had enough of his own personal trauma as it was.

[myblueskies]

Romeo opened his eyes, the dream had been so frightening! He sat bolt upright in his bed and looked around with wide eyes. Miss Sora! He spotted her; she was hugging one of her princesses, Miss Yuki he thought her name was.

It had all been a dream, Miss Sora wasn't dead, there were no shadow monsters and there were definitely no giant blue tigers. That was silly, the doctor had taught him about tigers in his lessons with Bianca and they were orange not blue!

Still the dream had been very scary and he broke into a huge smile at seeing the people in his room walking about. He jumped out of bed and padded over to where Miss Sora and Miss Yuki were.

He stood at the side of the bed and felt so happy that they were alive and it had been just a bad dream. "Good morning Miss Sora, Miss Yuki."

[allurprincess]

Sora flinched as Tougyu's fist hit the wall, hand tightening around Yuki's arm briefly before she realised what she was doing and smoothed down her sleeve with an apologetic brush of her fingers.

Sometimes people needed to be left alone, right? She watched him anyway, because if he needed her help she'd be over to him in a heartbeat, but when their final roommate had just woken up, she had to split her concentration and her worry in equal measures. Her expression shifted to one much more cheerful; it was partly a brave front, and partly because she was honestly glad to see him up and okay.

"Good morning, Romeo!"

[myblueskies]

Romeo smiled again but his smile wavered as he saw the man go into the bathroom, he was glad he was leaving and not coming in because he scared Romeo. Miss Sora seemed to like him, Miss Sora liked everyone, but he reminded Romeo of Alfredo's padrone and that scared Romeo.

It was back a second later though as Romeo tilted his head to the side, "Is miss Yuki all right, miss Sora?"

[allurprincess]

"We didn't sleep well last night," she said, simply, "How about you?"

[myblueskies]

At Sora's words about sleep Romeo's smile fell from his face. "No... I had a bad dream..." He screwed up his face trying not to think of the dream. Trying not to remember seeing Sora being burnt to ash and all the screams, the smoke and the shadow monsters.

"It was just a dream," his voice was quiet but he was trying to be strong. Alfredo would never let nightmares scare him. "Tigers are orange not blue, right miss Sora?"