Round 2 [all characters and round announcement]

[utopiamods]

You're falling, and you can't remember why. It's a sickening feeling that makes your insides lurch; the darkness and the vertigo combine, and all you can think of is a story you heard once, somewhere.

- I remember now. It's a simple story that everyone knows. A legend of a Princess, the Demon Lord who kidnapped her, and the Knight who fought to save her.

The Demon Lord had kidnapped the Princess countless times, but every time the Knight bested his challenges and rescued the Princess.

No matter what tricks and ploys the Demon Lord used, the Knight would always triumph in the end. This was because--

The world tilts on its axis one last time, and the dream slips from your mind as easily as it arrived. A new voice intrudes on your sleep.

"Next stop: Academy Main Entrance. This tramline terminates here; all change. Next stop: Academy Main Entrance. All change."

Sunlight streams through the windows of the long carriage, making the seats almost uncomfortably warm beneath its waking passengers. The air is muggy and thick, the atmosphere deeply tired. Your nausea settles, slowly. The last of the dream fades.

"We have arrived at Utopia. Repeat, we have arrived at Utopia Academy. Could all passengers please leave the tram, as it is terminating here."

The tram pulls to a stop outside the academy station, and anyone onboard is ushered off and directed to the front lobby of the school. You can't miss it; there are signs up pointing toward the main entrance, reading "New student orientation" in big, bright letters. If anyone should care to move off the path, try exploring somewhere else, a teacher will conveniently appear to shoo them back toward the lobby, assuring them that "all your questions will be answered inside".

The lobby is big and spacious, looking more like a university or perhaps a fancy international hotel than a high school. Stood around are any number of students in the uniform of the school. Some of them even look awake. There are several receptionists at the desk towards the back of the lobby, but for now they seem busy with paperwork.

Anyway, the many screens are far more interesting. Once a good number of students are gathered inside the building, they all activate at once to show a cheerful, almost cavity-inducing woman in the school uniform. She smiles, waves, and launches into her speech without further ado.

"Good afternoon to our new students here at Utopia Academy! Thank you for choosing to enroll with us for this, our first semester of the new year. Our battle system is the best in the world, set up for you, our students! I hope that you all had a fun journey here, and that you've all made some new friends! You're going to need them soon, so keep them close, okay?

"Unfortunately, some of you have had to leave unexpectedly... This is a little upsetting, because they didn't finish paying their fees. So they've left a few things behind. Their friends should collect those to remember them by! After all, they might not come back, or they might be back next round! You never know.

"Now, I'm going to explain the rules for you. Make sure to listen carefully, and remember, you can find all of this and more in the Exaclan manual!"

She outlines the battle system for the newbies as she has every round previous, then claps her hands. The screen goes blank for a second, and then shows a blue screen with FIRST ANNUAL EXACLAN TOURNAMENT in scrolling white text. The girl appears again in a smaller window in one corner of the screen, and resumes talking.

"This is a special round! Exciting, isn't it? Of course, you can keep fighting as you normally do, too, but we'll also be running a tournament! Every Player has to take part, even if you don't make it through the preliminaries, but you should try hard! There's a big prize for those of you who make it to the last rounds. Now, there are twelve of you this time, and you'll all be fighting in the preliminaries."

The screen changes, to show first the list of Players, then a tree-style tournament diagram. The matches for Day 1 are as follows:

Rafiel vs. Hikaru Sulu
Lloyd Asplund vs. Montblanc
Mai Tokiha vs. Yuka Osada

The matches for Day 2 are:

Shoryu vs. Kallen Stadtfeld
Road Kamelot vs. Grenn Atair
Molly Hayes vs. Miwako Ihara

"After you all fight, we'll have six Players left. That means the third day will have three fights again! Ah, the last three days are for finalists only, but we'll talk about that later! If you have any more questions, ask at the desk, okay? Bye for now, and work hard! The fights start tomorrow~"

Comments

*is totally here way too early*

[choseanidiot]

As of yet, he had avoided being owned; he wanted no part in the violence, even less this frivolous sort. There may be no injuries, there may be no blood, but the pain was real enough and who did something like that? How sick could you be?

Enki gave the receptionists an angry glare as he stormed into the lobby. He wasn't sure why he was here, exactly. Some would maybe have said it was because it was one of the places unrestricted to the 'discards', but what did he care? The forests were free to walk through, for example. He didn't really mind the discard position; there was more than enough to eat, and most of the desserts he neither cared for, nor could have, anyway. It could also have been, for some, that apparently a new round started today (or tomorrow, rather), and possibly new students arriving. But he really didn't want to know who would have to fight, and new 'students'? What a joke.

Besides all that, he still had no plans of participating, and anyway, his weapon, he knew, wasn't very strong. That his weapon actually looked like a weapon made his insides curl up on themselves; he'd have been much happier with something that did not look like an actual weapon.

Standing some way past the now-closed doors behind him, Enki scowled and scratched his neck. Why had he wandered into here, anyway? The announcement wouldn't be for a bit yet. There was something... If he had been home, he'd have said it felt like when he was getting closer to the king after having been in Hourai for a few days, but that couldn't be it, because the king wasn't here. Couldn't be here.

He'd even take Shōryū's precense!

Anything!

And he really wished that strange, faint elated sensation would go away.

hi there

[goodtobetheking]

This was a perfectly ridiculous situation. Someone, somehow, had managed to spirit him to Hourai without his knowledge or consent. Shōryū was a little shakey on that last part - there had been some kind of consent, he thought - but considering his last waking moment had been in somewhere with green pillars and a lot of very friendly, obliging citizens of En, the quality and official status of that consent was in serious trouble.

But he digressed. This was, as previously mentioned, a perfectly ridiculous situation, and that was precisely why he was sporting a smirk wide enough to make his other half yell at him for a year for even thinking of enjoying it.

Given that his mind was hazed over and dull as he was hurried off the tram and towards the building, he managed to stride into the lobby with infuriating casualness. His head cleared even as he entered through the doors, and he looked around with fresh eyes and a renewed smile. Best to determine where he was, before he made any decisive moves.

[discarded]

Miwako stared at the screen in disbelief. "I--I have to fight? But...!"

[lookouthalifax]

Montblanc spotted the girl's distress. He got up on this tip-toes and waved, trying to draw her attention.

[hairwag]

Tomoko glanced over at Miwako, she had been standing nearby the other girl when she spoke up.

"A-ah, are you alright?"

[queenscheckmate]

"So they change dhow the game is played..." Kallen eyed the monitor, not amused by any means. But when the girl continued her speech and then displayed the names on the screen, she froze. Not because she was a Player this round, but there was a a certain name that caught her eye.

Hikaru Sulu.

If the chance ever arises that you and I become Players during the same round... promise me that we won't fight each other. I don't think... I could do it again.

She remembered saying that to him and in response, he told her that he agreed to keep that promise. Kallen was all about winning. It would mean she was closer to find out what was going on in this place. But she had to defeat Sulu in order to do it, she would refuse to do it.

Kallen idly looked around, seeing if she saw the male anywhere. They both had been avoiding each other. Awkward glances and all the whole nine. She was above this whole 'girl in love' thing because that wasn't her. Kallen Kozuki didn't fall in love... at least not like this.

But for now, she had to prepare. She needed to find someone who could be her weapon.

[trollofthree]

Luckily, she didn't have far to look. Gino had already began making his way over to her by the time the woman had finished speaking, and as the screens settled back into the tournament list, he was looming over her, hands in pockets and a smile firmly in place.

"Looks like it's your turn, ace."

[loyal_liar]

Lyra looked up at the list... Well, she knew several of them... And three of them were her Weapons last round. She silently resolved to partner up with one of them. Hopefully, her weapon would be something useful, and she had tokens to pay for upgrades, too!

[myblueskies]

Romeo appeared at Lyra's side with a smile as he read the names from the technology screen. He still didn't understand how he could read from here but not from books or paper. He knew Molly, they had swam together and he recognised Road and Grenn from the list of adults they had written. None of the children who had came to the meeting were players. He wondered what they were going to do about the kids that didn't want to fight, he worried that they would not be able to find someone who would protect them but not force them to fight.

"Hello Lyra," he said with a grin.

[willbeurprincess]

She wasn't a player this round...And neither was Sora. But Grenn was. She wondered if Grenn even remembered Koharu's offer. Well even if she did not, Koharu would still offer herself for her. She was a decent weapon, moreso for someone for whom normal melee battle was a chore.

She looked around, hoping to catch her eye.

[summerstars]

Grenn was close enough to see Koharu looking around, but honestly thought she was looking for Sora, really. Not that she really could help with that, because even with fewer people and hardly any new incoming, there were enough people in the lobby it was hard to see anyone specific unless you were close, or knew where they were.

"Koharu, looking for Sora?" Grenn was rather proud it had only taken her a slight hesitation to steer up beside Koharu and ask, but it was definitely easier to approach someone she actually lived it.

MEANWHILE AT THE... LAB?

[earlofpudding]

If it could even be called a lab just yet. There was still a lot of work left to do if he was going to mod out the workroom. Thus, Lloyd was suspiciously absent from the round change announcement. He had glanced at one of the other screens while moving some stuff from the dorm to the workroom he'd claimed...

He hadn't seen any sign of his name on the match-ups.

...though, what had it been again?

Well. That wasn't his problem. Only it really was.

What was his problem was his assistant had vanished and instead of sulking over it, he hit an obsessive workaholic cycle. So, no, no Lloyd at the building with everyone else. He had work to do. He had tables to set up, a chalkboard to get through that door, an entire room's wiring to rewire in a way more convenient to him, windows to black out to keep snoops from snooping; anything, anything at all to keep busy.

Uh, so, someone might want to drop by and tell him he actually is stuck as a Player this time around...

[brokencrane]

For most of the presentation, all Yuka could think about was how much the woman in the video reminded her of that woman at Smart Brain back home. Smart Brain couldn't be behind this whole strange school, could they? They were powerful, but not this powerful...and it wouldn't help them make more Orphenochs, anyway, since no one was dying. And surely if they were sending people off to a place like this, they'd send Kiba-san just to be rid of him...no, it couldn't be Smart Brain. But the resemblance was still a bit unsettling.

But she forgot all about that when it reached the list of Players. Because her name was on that list, and she had no idea what to do about it; you needed a Weapon to fight, didn't you? So she'd have to find someone to ask, and she didn't really know that many people here yet, and asking someone to do that for her would be so weird. Never mind that she didn't want to fight at all, and didn't even know how to fight when she was stuck in human form. And she had to participate in this tournament starting tomorrow?!

So she just stood there, staring at the screen in disbelief, and trying really hard not to look as nervous as she felt.

[allurprincess]

"Yuka!" Sora had made a split decision when the names had come up and none of her group had been amongst them; Koharu had gone towards Grenn, and if any of her princesses asked, Sora would direct them towards some of the Players she knew, but she had seen a name that she wanted to help.

"Yuka, will you be my Player?"

[waddles]

He... was a player?

Granted, he had always known becoming one was a likely possibility but he hadn't expected it to come around so soon. What was he going to do? He wasn't physically capable and battle itself made his heart flutter with anxiety...

And... he had to hurt another? A stranger who had inflicted no harm upon him?

"... this is going to be difficult..." He murmured to himself, lowering his eyes as he shook his head. Impossible would be a better word for it.

[loyal_liar]

"You don't have to fight if you have five Weapons though," Lyra reminded him.

"Except for that match, apparently."

[lookouthalifax]

"Kupokupo!" Montblanc couldn't restrain the excited yelp at being chosen as a Player. There was so much to do! Like find a weapon, for example. How many were small enough for him to wield? Not many, probably!

He looked at the people around him, his pompom bouncing wildly with every excited jerk of his head. Who were his opponents? Who were his potential partners? It was sometimes hard being under four feet tall! It meant he could hardly see anyone in the area, and that unless they were very close, all they could see of him was a bright orange ball in the air.

if Lyra ends up as his weapon... She'd be usable for him?

[loyal_liar]

Well, Lyra spotted that pom-pom. And followed it.

"Montblanc!"

[bitofafiction]

Sherlock immediately begins to look for Sulu. The man ought to have a weapon he can handle, for this.

(If he had known Lloyd's name—but he doesn't, yet. And besides, friendship takes priority over experiments. He can always ask for a transfer later.)

[warpwhatsir]

He wasn't necessarily hard to find. Sulu's standing in front of the screen with something of a grin on his face. On one hand, he's finally a Player and that's certainly a relief from the last two rounds, but on the other hand... he did make a promise.

He shakes his head to clear his thoughts, smile slipping into a soft frown, a crease between his eyes. First things first--find a Weapon. So, their priorities are straight enough that they ought to make a good team. Come on over, Sherry.

[myblueskies]

Romeo looked up at the screan, listening to the lady. His boss of the last round had been someone who had left, and Romeo wasn't sure he had just left... because he hadn't even said goodbye to Romeo, just dissapeared before lunch and had not returned.

He blinked up at the list of bosses for this round, he recognised Molly's name, she was nice. He had went swimming with her, and he recognised Road and Grenn from the list of nice people that they had made, but he had no idea what they looked like.

He wandered sticking to the edges of the room trying to avoid the adults as much as possible.

[monkeystail]

Huashi looked up at the screen with a frown, and tugged thoughtfully at one of the tails framing her face. Neither she nor Kotarou were Players this round.

There were only two names up there she was more than vaguely familiar with. Miwako, who she'd had as a weapon, and Kallen. Then there was Rafiel, too, of course... Huashi shook her head and looked down at Kotarou.

"What'd you want to do? Do you want desserts and such?" If he did, they'd both become weapons to whoever they agreed upon, and Huashi'd make sure they either didn't use Kotarou at all, or only the two of them together. She would not risk something like Kotarou ending up in a coma again.

[tenwholeryou]

He didn't really need dessert, but if he wasn't owned, he couldn't get permission to use the gym any more. He scowled up at the screens one more time, then stuffed his hands in his pockets and began looking for a familiar head of red hair.

"Let's go find Kallen. Come on!"

[swordofzero]

Suzaku frowned as he looked up at the screen, people had left? It wasn't possible to leave was it? It sounded strange and he read the new list of names, frowning at the mention of a tournament. That was just another way to make people fight, and this way even people who gained five weapons and won the round quickly would be forced to fight. That was unfair and Suzaku felt the anger that simmered whenever he thought about the fact they had been kidnapped and brought here and forced to fight in the first place.

He looked at the list of names, Lloyd was a player? That could be potentially dangerous, perhaps he should go and find him and become his weapon. He looked around but the man was nowhere to be seen, he had probably got distracted with an experiment or something.

The only other name he knew was Yuka, the potential terrorist who he had met a few days earlier. He looked around for Lelouch, Lelouch probably had six plans and eight counterplans for what they should do now. So he waited.

[dancingflames]

Well...great. She was going to have to fight now, it seemed.

Looking somewhat uncertain about this turn of events, Mai stared up at the monitor, seeing the name of her assigned opponent. Yuka Osada. It's not someone she has met, but hopefully she could find some civil way around it. That woman had penalized students for not fighting though, hadn't she?

There had to be some better way...even if this didn't leave wounds. But would she be able to figure out something before tomorrow?

[myblueskies]

Romeo moved through the crowd, he was looking for people he knew. He didn't know that many and he still disliked these big crowds full of adults. He was so busy looking to see if he could find anyone that he almost bumped into someone. He jumped back and his eyes widened slightly when he saw that it was an adult.

"I'm sorry ma'am!"

Specify before or after she changes~

[magicallife]

A new student arrived off the tram, but something was a bit unusual about her. The mask, for one thing, concealing her identity might be enough to mark her as unusual, but her choice of garment was also hardly the typical garb a student might wear.

For one, it was rather garish and, quite frankly, somewhat indecent. The skirt was far shorter than the uniform skirt she had found in the handbag she awoke to having on her lap. Really not something that ensured a proper covering. And her top? Not exactly the best at covering either. The metal folding fan was pretty showy too, all in all rounding out an outfit that wanted to grab the viewer's eyes.

How she had ended up on this tram was beyond her, but it was clearly time to find some place and change out of this outfit. This all felt like some kind of trap, and it's not one she wanted to be caught in. And Mizuno....had she seen Mizuno? She thought she spotted that girl stepping off of the tram, but while wearing this thing, she couldn't exactly go talk to her...

The girl slipped out of the crowd gathering in the lobby, headed towards the nearest girl's restroom she could find, rather eager to get out of this outfit.

---

A few minutes passed before Marino managed to emerge from the bathroom, waiting for a moment when the coast was clear. Now dressed in the Utopia Academy uniform, she could relax a little more and figure out what was going on here.

Unfortunately, having arrived in that outfit, she currently didn't have the luxury of a bra under the top, nor more comfortable underwear, but at least she wasn't stuck in those rather flashy clothes. She shuffled back into the crowd, uncomfortably folding her arms in front of her as she looks around the crowd.

before~

[lifeismagical]

Mizuno was confused and disconcerted. She remembered waking up in a cold sweat and nearly throwing the alarm clock, but why she'd do that...bad dream, maybe? (But what kind of bad dream would involve her alarm clock?)

And then she'd been on the tram, and she didn't remember how that had happened, either. But none of that really mattered.

Because she remembered that Marino was gone, and it was her fault. She'd said those horrible things, and...

So it was a huge relief to see her there...even with that mask and those strange clothes, she'd recognize Marino anywhere.

"Marino!" That was the only warning Marino would get before a pink and yellow blur threw itself at her, arms open wide.