rakuen | Red Dorm Shenanigans [Open to Red Dorm and Everyone]

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Red Dorm Shenanigans [Open to Red Dorm and Everyone]

Mei managed to arrive at the Red dormitory sometime soon after the general confusion of the gathering at the entrance hall without getting too lost. The buildings here weren't too off-putting for her. They looked a lot like Central! Not that she was entirely familiar with that place, either, but it was at least a tiny bit comforting. Maybe it meant the academy was in Amestris somewhere! If she could just figure out a way to escape.

But until then, she could play along. The tiny girl tracked down 1-B and...

"We get beds?" Eeeee! They got their own beeeds! It had been so long since Mei got to sleep in a real bed! And seeing she was the first to arrive, she took the opportunity to claim the one closest to the window and then quickly switched into her uniform. She opted for the black trousers over the skirt. Her old clothes, still bloodstained and torn, were carefully folded and left on the bed she'd claimed as her own.

"Oh!" She put a hand to her face once she'd finished putting things away. She'd almost forgotten about the blood. She needed to find the washroom! And a mirror! Shiny new clothes to look at! It would be a lie to say she wasn't excited over that, too. Not to mention, she might need a mirror if she was going to wash the smears of dried blood off of her face effectively. She just hoped none of it had gotten on the uniform...

Alright. Next stop, washroom. Mei zoomed back out of 1-B and into the first floor hallway. One had to be here somewhere!

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Rapunzel found that there was slightly more obstacles to her hair here. It caught on the grass, tangled in the door jambs, so she was carrying half of it in her arms, reciting the room number over and over in her head. Anything to distract right? Aha here it was.

"Oh--Oh hello." She stopped short of the girl coming out of the dorm, pretending she hadn't clutched her hair in her hands like a weapon. She really needed something to defend herself with.

Ah! Another student!

Mei stopped and looked up at her. "Hi!" Then looked down. Then up again. Then down. Then she leaned a little to the side to keep looking at the hair that Rapunzel hadn't managed to fit in her arms. All... that... hair. "Wooow. You have so much hair."

She did, too! Though all of her hair was braided. Even so, loose, she doesn't think it would match the length of that!

"Um." Mei pointed. "There are twigs. Do you need help?" Letherbraiditletherbraidit-- no, no, Mei can resist the urge to bounce up and down and excitedly ask just that. It would be impolite to ask a total stranger that.

Rapunzel laughed a little, you would think that was all to her some days. Her natural trust of small cute things kicked in and she gave a little shrug.

"It's been growing since I was a baby."

Then she glanced back at the trail behind her and winced, "Oh this is going to take forever to brush out isn't it? Drat."

"I wish I could've let mine grow since then, but they made me get haircuts sometimes..."

She did fit into the small and cute category, didn't she? How lucky! Mei chewed on her thumb for a moment and glanced from Rapunzel to the room, then down the hall behind them.

"There might be a brush in the room. Or the washroom. I was looking for that just now." She turned and pointed down the hallway. "I think it's down that way! Since I didn't see anything like it out front."

Rapunzel gathered her hair in her arms again, pausing to pick out a twig and a few leaves. She had a brush at home--

But this wasn't home. She blinked a few times getting the dust out of her eyes and beamed at Mei.

"I'll go look then shall I?" She tossed her bag into the room and headed out for washroom. She was somehow more confident with her tiny guide beside her.

The red dorm was where his brother was staying, or so the receptionist had told Fletcher, so here he was, taking a look at it. It was close enough to the pale dorm that it didn't take him long at all to get there. He'd changed into the pants version of the Utopia Academy uniform after getting his own clothes dirty while wandering around outside earlier.

It didn't seem all that different from his own dorm, just decorated in different colors. What a weird scheme for organizing dormitories. Fletcher wondered if this was normal.

As he was standing in the front hall, he noticed a girl walking nearby. He waved to her, not wanting to look rude.

Mei was strolling back from finding the washroom. It was good to have a shiny clean face again! Better yet, the uniform looked very nice! It wasn't as nice as Xingese silks, but it was at least colorful and the swishy tails on the vest were rather fun to have.

In fact, the way she was strolling down the hall was exaggerated just for the sake of making the tails swish all the more.

Until she spotted Fletcher, at least. Mei stopped in her tracks when she did, embarrassed. Oops. Her attention cast around at random until she was feeling more stupid for not waving back than for walking funny. At that point, she looked at him again and raised a hand.

"Hi!" The girl bounced a little closer to the other kid and added excitedly, "Did you know they have running water here? They do!" Another thing that made her happy, though initially she had spazzed out about that back when she first got to Amestris, but it was well worth a second go.

"Ah-- yeah, I saw!" That was an odd thing to be excited about, but she was happy about it, and he wasn't going to take that away from her. He smiled back. "The buildings here are really nice actually. They're way better than the ones in my town."

Not that he would pick Utopia Academy over Xenotime. He was just saying.

"Um, I'm Fletcher," he said, holding out a hand. "It's nice to meet you!"

It was just one of the many things she could never take for granted. Though now that that bit of excitement was blurted and out of the way, she latched onto the topic of buildings. "They're alright!"

She leaned closer to Fletcher and, after looking around the hall suspiciously, added in a whisper, "They're kinda like the buildings in Central, right? I think we're somewhere near there."

Mei stepped back again and gave the extended hand a curious look. Oh, right. Handshakes. She took his hand and shook it. "I'm Mei! I didn't think there would be other kids here." She had only seen people who were well into their teens so far.

After the handshake he lowered his hand, and nodded. "I guess they kind of do... Central's the only place I've seen buildings this big. But there're a lot of things here I never saw in Central, like that screen that played that movie..."

And then, "It seems like there's mostly people my brother's age. Ah, but I met another kid here! Her name's Molly."

"The screen?" That thing had been weird, but that entire nation was weird. "Maybe it was something new! There are a lot of strange things around that place."

Mei folded her hands behind her and idly rocked back on the heels of her shoes. "Really? Does she know how to fight, too?" She tilted her head to one side, thinking. "And do you? Because maybe the military kidnapped everyone to make... um... a top secret army!"

In her imagination's defense, they seemed really into that making horrible top secret armies thing.

"Molly said she has super-strength, but it didn't work when she tried using it... They might've taken it away, though, because--because for some reason I can't use alchemy here." Even with the circles that hadn't been removed from his memory. "But I can't fight, and there're a lot of alchemists who are a lot better than me, so if they're doing something like that then why pick me...?"

"Super-strength?" Mei isn't even sure how to parse that. Does that mean strength augmented by alchemy? Or maybe something inhuman? She doesn't ask, in any case. There was suddenly a more pressing concern.

"It doesn't?" She looked down at the hallway floor and tapped a foot against it. Hands moved to her hips and she sighed. "I thought as much. I haven't been able to sense anything since I got here..."

Mei looked up again. "You said your brother was here, too, right? Maybe you're a hostage!"

His eyes went wide. A hostage? He hadn't considered that. If they wanted his brother as a member of their super army, that was a good move!

"Um--um." He stuttered, and then latched onto the thing that he was able to respond to without panicking: "Sense anything? What do you mean?"

A really good move. What a mean thing to do to a kid.

"Huh?" Mei gave him a puzzled look, but just for a moment. Amestrian. Right. "People in Xing can sense the flow of energy in the earth. If other abilities aren't working, then that explains why I can't."

"Oh!" He hadn't realized she was from Xing. Sure, she didn't look Amestrian and she did have a bit of an accent, but Fletcher was possibly the most sheltered child ever. "You can do that...? How could they make it not work, though?"

Aw, Fletcher. Sheltered child, meet child that is extremely not sheltered. This should end well.

"Mmhm!" Mei nodded. "I can! Or, um. I could." The next question gives her pause. She thinks on it for a minute or two before suggesting, "Maybe they figured out a circle that blocks Alchemy and other abilities?"

He grabbed on to the front of his vest nervously. "I--I guess..." How else could they have done it? If alchemy required the circulation of energy, then maybe somehow a counter-circulation could cancel it out...?

"We, we should figure out how to stop it then," he said uncertainly. "There has to be some way?"

"We found something like that before, but if my Alkahestry won't work, we need a physical way to break the circle instead." At least, Mei thinks that might work. Break the circle and the power is gone without the focus.

So she had seen something similar before. It made sense that she would suspect something like that, then. It probably was something like that. "Alkahestry? Is that-- what they call alchemy in Xing?"

She sure would. The overactive imagination wheeling through conspiracies in her head had helped her thesis along, of course. "Sort of. The difference is... er..."

Uh oh.

What were the differences again?

He tilted his head, waiting for her to continue, and when she didn't he was confused. "The difference?" There had to be some, right?

"I can't remember!" She grabbed her braids and wrung them in frustration, like that might help the memory return. Nope. "Ieee! They took that memory, too!"

"Why--why would they take something like that?!" Why would they take any of the memories they took, though? What sort of logic did they use in deciding which memories went and which stayed?

"Um-- um, someone else might know! Or maybe, maybe there are books in the library?"

"I don't even know!" It didn't even seem like that much of an important memory, but now that she didn't have it, oh how did she want it back. Mei let go of her braids and crossed her arms with an annoyed huff instead.

"Probably not. If we're still in Amestris, well, you guys don't really know anything about Alkahestry. Hmph. I'll just win the memory back."

THEN WHO WILL BE LAUGHING, MYSTERIOUS KIDNAPPERS? WHO?

Fletcher nodded. "R-right! Good luck, Mei! Um-- my brother says I'm not supposed to fight at all, or I'd buy you some memory charms."

Mei smiled. "It's alright! I can get them. I've fought scarier things than the other kids here at this academy."

"Ohh." Well, at least she would be well-off. Russel would be fine too. Was Fletcher the only one who couldn't actually fight? That would be a little disheartening.

"Good luck," he said again, then realized that he'd repeated himself. "Um... Is this your dorm then?"

"I'll need all the luck I can get. Thank you." Mei then nodded to the question. "It is! I'm in..." She pointed. "That one. 1-B. Is this your dorm, too?"

He shook his head. "I'm in, um, the pale dorm. I just came to look around hre since my brother's in this dorm. In 1-A."

"Oh!" Mei promptly pointed out the door on the other side of the hall. "1-A is that one. Does that mean you'll visit here a lot?"

"I think so!" He nodded. "When my brother's not visiting my dorm, anyway. Or when we aren't in the library..." He could picture himself spending a lot of time in the library.

"Then let's be friends!" Mei wouldn't mind an alliance with other kids her own age. They weren't as complicated as teenagers or as better-than-thou as adults.

Another friend so soon? Maybe this place had its silver lining, too. "Okay!" Fletcher smiled. "I'd love to, Mei."

"Great!" A new friend, what a good way to start turning a scary situation into something better. Though lacking anything more to add at the moment, she said, "I'm going to go poke around my room some, but we should start looking for that circle sometime soon. Maybe you should ask your brother to help!"

It sounded like they were both Alchemists. That could be useful, even if just as a knowledge base.

He nodded. "Okay! I'll go find him and let him know you said so!"

He was glad not everyone had been made to forget all about alchemy like Molly had. Even if he and Mei had had a lot of stuff removed from their memories, there was still a little left. "See you later!"

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Red Dorm Shenanigans [Open to Red Dorm and Everyone]

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