rakuen | Round 2 [all characters and round announcement]

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Round 2 [all characters and round announcement]

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~"

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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.

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.

Marino caught the familiar weight with that little warning, nearly falling over in the process. But, being used to this sort of thing, she had the strength to resist that and managed to place the pajamaed figure down on the floor safely in front of her.

But now came the more serious part - had Mizuno been heard? A quick glance to either side showed no immediate threat at least. At least she was sticking to the edge of the crowd. Taking on a somewhat dramatic tone, Marino put on a futile show. "Sorry, but I believe you mean someone else, miss?"

Mizuno blinked. Why was Marino acting like this? It didn't make sense to her.

"Why would I mean someone else? Marino is Marino."

...Yeah, she knew it probably wouldn't work, but oh well.

"I was just kidding," Marino replied with a slight smile, back to a usual tone. Looking over to the nearest wall, she motioned to it for Mizuno. "Let's go over there where it's not quite as noisy." There was a lot of chatter, to be fair, but she was more concerned about being overheard than that.

"It wasn't a very good joke."

Mizuno followed her sister's lead, fidgeting a little. "Um, Marino...I'm sorry. About last night, I mean. I shouldn't have said those things to you." And even if she can't remember why she said them... "I didn't mean it."

Marino was about to respond to the first statement with something rather whimsical, but what Mizuno said took her attention. She turned back to her sister. "Sorry, what part of last night do you mean?" Sure, they'd talked last night, but she couldn't remember anything that particularly would jump out at her.

"Which part...?"

That didn't make any sense, either. It seemed to Mizuno like something that would jump out at Marino, especially since it'd upset Marino enough that she'd left and hadn't come back by morning. She almost asked if her sister had been kidding about that, too, but that wasn't the kind of thing Marino would make a joke about.

She didn't remember, then? That didn't make a lot of sense, either, but then Mizuno couldn't remember why she'd said those horrible things or how she'd ended up here. "Well...if you don't remember it, it's probably better that way.

"Either way, I'm sorry."

"Don't worry," the masked girl responded. "Whatever it was, it's nothing to worry about." She smiled back, and almost reached up to stroke the side of Mizuno's head gently. But she couldn't act too close like this, or someone might find out her identity and connect her to Mizuno. Why that was important, she couldn't quite remember, but it still weighed on her mind.

So far she hadn't seen anyone, but it's unlikely they were the only two brought to whatever this school was...

She still thought it was kind of important, but... "Okay. If you think I shouldn't worry about it, Marino, I'll try not to."

Mizuno paused, idly playing with her hair. "Hey, Marino, why are you dressed like that, anyway?"

"Because I'm a protector of justice, of course," came the facetious response.

"Really? Like a tokusatsu hero?"

"That's correct!" Marino continued to build up the brief lie. "That's why we can't be seen together while I'm in this disguise."

"But I guess you're safe for the moment," she added.

"Safe..." Marino was always like this, wasn't she, Mizuno thought to herself. Always like "Don't tell anyone you're the West Maiden," "I'll protect you," etc. Truthfully, she didn't understand it, but she did feel safer around Marino. Because Marino was Marino.

"Hmm...but if you're a protector of justice, you need a cool name, right?" Not that Marino wasn't a cool name. It just wasn't a very...impressive one? And if this is a secret identity...

"Don't worry about that," Marino responded, not really having intended to draw this out so far. It had been just a spur of the moment joke. But now that she thought about it, she was fighting against injustice wasn't she? How exactly, she can't remember.

"But I should really go change into my uniform. So should you, probably, especially if they do uniform inspections today." Pajamas are comfortable and all, but not exactly made for transferring to a new school.

Upon awakening on the balmy tram, Sugata certainly did not expect to see a member of the Glittering Crux. He remembered her, it was Manticore, he was fairly sure. He stayed behind some others, but watched her through a gap. She seemed very confused, which told him this wasn't something she'd been responsible for.

He watched her gather up her things, and he followed suit. He was unfortunately in his pajamas, and he for some reason had his pillow. It was like being pulled into Zero-Space, but there were a lot more people, and it seemed to have a firmer basis in reality. Something couldn't have happened to Wako, he would know. So with bag over his shoulder and pillow under his elbow, he nonchalantly kept an eye on the woman as she left the tram.

Was that Mizuno? Hadn't she left? She wasn't even a Maiden anymore. And how could she be so familiar with a member of the Glittering Crux? He frowned, mulling all of this over as the woman slipped into the washroom.

When she emerged again, things made a bit more sense. Marino You was Manticore of the Glittering Crux. How could the sister of one of the Maidens join the enemy? This just didn't make sense. But now, it was safer to approach her.

"You-san!" he called through the crowd to her. He made it look like he'd only just found her. "You've been brought here too?"

Marino had been just on her way to try to talk to one of the women at the desks here about where she might be able to find some undergarments when the voice came through the crowds. Turning to look, she spotted the boy. It was rather hard to live on Southern Cross Island (much less go to her school) without knowing who he was: Class 1-1's Sugata Shindou.

Shifting uncomfortably due to her clothing situation, she stood still and waited for him to come closer. "Shindou-san, isn't it?" she spoke, not wanting to raise her voice too much.

He closed the gap, and settled a comfortable distance from her. "Yes, Shindo Sugata," he said. "I have to admit I'm glad to see a familiar face. Do you know what's going on?"

"I only know what they've told us," she replied. "Beyond that, I don't know how we ended up here at all. It's quite confusing..." Though she remembers agreeing to something, what that is she cannot recall. "Did you just arrive too?"

He nodded. "Yes, I did." He fidgeted a bit with the collar of his pajamas. "I guess I should go change. I hope there's some shoes available..."

Looking down, sure enough his feet were lacking in that. It's fitting given his pajamas but still weird. "There were dress shoes in the bag they gave me," Marino replied, shifting uncomfortably.

"But I don't know about athletic shoes. Or why we turned up without luggage at least. Maybe we should ask at one of the desks?" she asked. Not that she was about to ask for undergarments in front of him.

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Round 2 [all characters and round announcement]

Specify before or after she changes~

before~

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