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Characters: Lyra Silvertongue, and anyone who drops by!
Format: Whatever you want.
This log is: open
Location: Red Common Room.
Summary: After finding out she's a player and poking around the campus a bit, Lyra spends some time in her dorm's common room.
Warnings: Probably none.

That woman was unnerving, and had been no help at all as far as answers went, but at least she'd given Lyra everything she asked for. Notebooks, paper, pens, pencils, markers, and a large pile of sugary snacks and candy, along with six cans of cola- she'd realized she couldn't remember what it tasted like, but it was one memory that she could recover through experience. The same with whatever the word was for that color the sky was.

Leaving the candy untouched for a moment, she tacked up her first two pieces of paper to the noticeboard, both written in Lyra's messy hand. The first read "I'm a Player looking for Weapons", and the second read "How much does anyone know about this place?"

She decided that would be enough for now, and started trying to draw a picture of Iorek from out of her memory in the meantime, as she curled up on the most comfortable chair she could find.

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El leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. Such an inquisitive girl, and to think that she's only arrived. Though he could understand her curiosity as well as confusion in this place. He's seen a few who had, well, problems adjusting with the place, constantly questioning the games.

Ideas of her own? He smiled inwardly. He'd like to hear what those would be.

"Well . . . " El paused, feigning another thoughtful look. He supposed that there was nothing wrong giving away what he knew about the original Utopia since it didn't give him or Sora Himoto any advantage anyway. Aside from the fact that she got all her princesses in one go.

"The administration of the school had been tight-lipped for a while now, refusing to answer questions directly. Though if I were to be asked, it's completely different from the school I've known."

"I'm pretty sure schools don't normally ask their students to fight each other," Lyra said, "Although I've never actually been to one."

Lyra leaned forward, and then tossed one of the sweets in the pile to the older boy, her expression serious- it looked rather odd, on such a young face.

"What's happened here, in the time everyone's been brought here? The game... Is it really so harmless?"

"I came from a school like this before. Exactly like this. Another school called Utopia with a game called Exaclan in play. But the rules were very different."

Both in the game and the school, the rules indeed differed. The existence of misogyny, the oppression of the girls, the existence of Iwahijiri . . . they were not in this school. El kept his smile as he watched the expression on the girl's face change to something far -- unexpected for a young girl like her.

He would have commented on it, on how it didn't suit a girl like her, but kept it to himself. Instead, El picked up the candy that was tossed, rolling it over and under his fingers, and moved on to her next set of questions.

"Do you really think a game that forces people to fight each other is harmless?" El smiled at the candy, watching it appear and disappear on his palm. "Exaclan is a virtual reality game. Whatever injuries you acquire during the game - for example, if you were shot - will not appear on your body physically. However the pain that accompanies it will also be felt. It applies both to you, as a Player, and your Weapon. But lately, the administration had been taking a few liberties with the system."

The smile he wore grew for a moment, an amused curve, and his palm closed around the candy tightly. Liberties, he called it, and yet he couldn't find any other term to describe that event days ago.

"Wait... My partners will feel pain to in the game? If it was just me- well, I'm kind of used to it," And besides, she'd always been one to grit her teeth and deal with it, "But everyone involved can feel pain too?" She'd definitely have to be careful then.

The serious look on Lyra's face only intensified at his last comment.

"What sort of liberties?"

"If the weapon you're using gets scratched, then your partner also feels that injury. Think of it as a link between them. So just imagine if your weapon gets destroyed."

He left it there for her to think about. Admittedly, he hasn't seen weapons getting destroyed yet despite it being common in Utopia. Fits of rage, frustration from losing, the blatant imposition of misogyny on the boys . . . weapons being discarded or broken up wasn't that big of a deal to him.

"The last round was particularly interesting, you could say." El looked down at his hands, frowning, his voice sounding grim. "It was announced that everyone was to be killed for maintenance."

"Like daemons then," Lyra murmured, looking horrified.. It was the closest comparison that came to mind, anyway. She'd have to be careful then.

"Kill you all- but they didn't, right? You're still alive," Lyra pointed out, looking stunned by his last statement.

"And if they tried, why haven't the lot of you burned this place to the ground?"

"It's just a game after all, isn't it? Even if your character dies, all it takes is a reset button to revive them. But dying feels the same nevertheless."

The pain of being shot, the cold grasp of death around his heart, even the blood. He died. That much, he was certain of. Maybe it was an in-game death but in the end, he still died, spent much of the last several days in a coma. The administration of this school was playing with their students, watching with amusement.

Just like how it was for him before.

El lifted an eyebrow at the suggestion then laughed quietly. What an amusing girl she was. "I suppose that's a good point. But do you really think something like that would effectively destroy whatever motivations this school have?"

"Dying en't a game." It took a lot of effort, but Lyra was able to say this calmly. She'd seen death before- and people didn't come back from it. But she didn't say that part.

"If you break whatever tools they're using to keep this school running, yeah. And you might find out something about their reasons from how they react." Stay calm, stay calm. Shouting wouldn't do any good.

"Breaking their tools? Does that include us as players of this game?" Technically, they were tools too - Weapons and Players - only given fancier names. He paused again, returning the candy he picked up on the table, then leaned back against the armchair to look up at the ceiling.

It was a naive way of thinking, he had to admit. A straightforward sense of justice. Well, Sora managed to keep on believing in those ideals.

"Sometimes brute force doesn't solve everything. Attacking head-on may just bring about more casualties rather than save more people. And you won't know if their reaction is genuine or not. I know others who can be very guarded with their own motives, even at the price of pain."

"Subtlety has it's place, sure... Is anyone trying to investigate this place? Is anyone... We have to play along to some degree, I know, but has anyone tried to find out more about what they're keeping from us? How much are people here organized?"

"And I know people can go really far to keep secrets but- When people do that, they have a reason- the truth's always there, you just have to find a way to get to it," Lyra told him stubbornly.

"Besides, this place... It en't the same, but the closest thing I've seen to it-" Lyra took a deep breath, and deliberately let her distress show on her face, "Was a place called Bolvangar, where they kidnapped kids and did experiments on 'em."

"I don't believe anyone has started investigating this place. Everyone just started obeying the rules of Utopia, I guess."

Complacency at the beginning did have its benefits such as going under the radar for certain things. It was easier to make sense of things when he's slowly going through everything, at his own pace.

El smiled again at her. Such an honest child, he wondered if she would be able to keep her idealism in a place like Utopia. But then again, this wasn't Utopia. "That kind of optimism is a good thing to have in a place like this."

And then, he leaned forward again, looking at her with the same curiosity as she once had. "Tell me more about the world you're from. I don't think it's the same one as this, is it?"

"Despair never got me very far," Lyra told him in a vague kind of tone.

"Well... My world doesn't have as much technology as this one. And the church has a lot of power. Oh- and everyone has a daemon," Lyra added, "Although I can't remember the name of mine. Or what his true form was."

"You didn't seem the type who would be swept away by despair anyway."

Another smile before he looked back up at the bulletin board. People like her, like Sora Himoto, they're never easy to faze by something called despair. That is, until their beliefs were shattered into a million pieces, hope dangled in front of them and yet held above reach. How fun that would be, to test this child if she would have the capacity to rise above it nevertheless.

El then slightly inclined his head in inquiry, an eyebrow rising at the word. "Daemon?" What a familiar and nostalgic word, when the title of Demon King still belonged to him. When he still had power. "What are those?"

"Ah... They're part of us, but outside of us... 'Soul' might be a good word for them. Ever person's daemon has a different form- they're all different kinds of animals... I can remember the shapes he took before he settled, but not which one he settled as, or what his name was," Lyra said softly, looking at her drawing, before peering back up at him, sizing him up.

"I know Will said it meant something bad in his world, but I just can't think of the word that way."

"I see. I've never heard of something like it before." 'Soul', he had, but it was more of a spiritual thing rather than something like this. He's yet to confirm the existence of different worlds aside from their own, given the nuances between the former students of Utopia and a handful of new students.

"But it's possible that - your daemon, is it? - could be a memory that you lost upon entering this school."

"Most likely. I wouldn't forget his shape or name otherwise," Lyra said.

"Although I'm not sure why whoever's behind this left him behind but took me instead- Although I don't think he's in this world as well, or I'd be able to sense him."

Alternate worlds were an accepted fact to Lyra. She'd been to several of them.

"I'd like to know if anyone besides me at this school's been to different worlds, though. Maybe the Authority's behind this somehow."

"Not that I know any but there should be a few others from unfamiliar places as well. If you ask around, I'm sure you'll meet some of them."

He frowned at the name though. Authority? The name itself sounded dominating enough and it's possibly similar to Iwahijiri but he didn't want to jump to conclusions just yet, seeing that the information about who runs this school is still concealed. "What's the Authority, if you don't mind me asking?"

"I've met a few already, yeah," Lyra says, not taking her eyes off of the boy in front of her.

"The Authority... Is what the Church calls God, but he en't, really. He's just the oldest angel," She supposed it was possible Lord Asriel might be behind this too, but the lack of choice didn't fit. Nor did him involving her in it- she expected he'd ignore her since she didn't have anything he wanted.

"It's just a guess, though. They've been beaten, anyway," Lyra shrugged.

"'God', is he?"

He almost smiled wryly at the word, at its implications. So it would seem that those terms were used just as liberally in other worlds. Instead, El feigned a thoughtful frown as he rested his elbows on his knees.

"It's said that people who have been defeated are twice more motivated to get back at those who defeated them. But is this something he would do, force people to fight each other mock battles?"

She was speaking literally, actually. Lyra pursed her lips at his next question though.

"It depends on what the real purpose of this place is. His followers didn't have a problem kidnapping kids and doing terrible things to 'em, though," Lyra said. She didn't bother disguising that she'd seen said things, shuddering a bit.

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sorry for the delay

It's okay!

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