rakuen | Next stop: Utopia Academy

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Next stop: Utopia Academy

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 sleeping passengers. The air is muggy and thick, the atmosphere relaxing. Almost too relaxing; the warmth and the silence make it difficult to immediately muster any kind of reaction or thought. 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."

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Reiko shifted where she was sitting and mumbled a little in her sleep. It was nice and warm and she didn't want to wake up.

She was still a little disoriented as she opened her eyes. Where was this? It didn't look like the school grounds. It looked like...

...a train? Utopia Academy. Could all passengers please...

She sat bolt upright in her seat, possibly disturbing whoever was next to her. "What's going on?"

The warmth of the train and the voice on the speaker pulled Fletcher out of his sleep, and slowly, his dream faded. He couldn't remember what he'd dreamt about anymore, which was normal for him, but somehow this dream seemed important. He could only grasp on to tiny details: A forest, a voice saying something about a promise... and a story.

He pushed himself up and rubbed his eyes with his hands, then opened them wide. Then closed them, and opened them again. Where was this? "...Brother?"

'Possibly' nothing. During their sleep, Kotarou had managed to slump over sideways with the movement of the tram, and had until that point been fast asleep against Reiko's side. As she moved, he was jerked awake.

And a Kotarou jerked awake isn't a good Kotarou.

"Huh?" He rubbed his eyes. It took him a few seconds to realise that the voice beside him wasn't Nanashi's, but when he did, it was his turn to bolt upright and stare. A woman! Why would-- he glanced around and took in the sleeping people on all of the seats of the strange room. He didn't know any of them. But, first things first; he turned back so he was facing the woman who'd spoken, and pointed at her. Rudely.

"Who are you?"

"Who am I? Who are you?" Reiko shot back, her look of confusion turning to irritation. "Don't talk like that to your elders, little boy!" Even if he was a boy and she was a girl, what gave him that right? Sheesh, he was already on the path to male domination. No wonder he was coming to Utopia.

"I'm not a little boy!" The objection was habit. His growl wasn't. "I'm Kotarou!"

He looked around again, and tried not to panic. It wasn't working. "Tobimaru!" Where were they? They'd been sleeping in the same haybale just minutes ago, he was sure of it. "Nanashi!"

Reiko stood up, stretching her arms above her head -- somehow, she felt like she'd been sitting or lying in one place for a long time -- and looked around. "You don't... know where you are, either? Aren't you a new student?"

Kotarou didn't manage to stifle his look of blank incomprehension in time, but tried anyway. Nope, wasn't fooling anybody. He switched tack.

"What're you talking about? We're in Japan! You think you can fool me just 'cause I'm a kid?"

"Of course we're in Japan, kid," she replied. Ugh, he was hopeless. "That's not what I asked!"

She turned to step down the aisle to the front of the tram, as the conductor repeated the message. If this kid didn't know anything, maybe the conductor would.

"H-hey!" Kotarou scrambled over the seat as she turned to walk away, and dropped to the floor next to her. No way was he staying behind with two other strangers still waking up. "Where are you going? Take me with you!"

"I'm going to find some answers," she said. She didn't slow down in the least for the little boy; if he wanted to keep up, he could keep up on his own merits. Or at least stop being so rude.

"Excuse me," she said to the conductor once they reached the front of the tram. "This is... Utopia Academy?"

"Coming up now, ma'am, yes." The conductor didn't turn, but she smiled briefly at Reiko and Kotarou in the mirror. "Looking forward to it?"

Hah. The skeptical look on Reiko's face said more than she could ever say out loud. "I was just at Utopia Academy! How did I get on this train? What's going on here?"

She'd already been... wherever they were going? Kotarou eyed the woman with renewed suspicion, but didn't move away. So far, she was his best chance at figuring out a way to escape.

"Looking forward to what?"

The conductor's smile didn't falter at the odd information, she just smiled again and flipped several switches on the dashboard.

"How exciting for you both. You'll be able to help the others, won't you?" She looked down at Kotarou, and added, "Why, Utopia is one of the best academies in the world."

The lack of actual answers was infuriating. "One of the best for him, you mean," she snapped. "Aren't you leaving out a few important details about what it's like there? Or are you not aware?"

Russel was a bit slower to rouse, the cue seeming to be the note of worry in Fletcher's voice. He lifted his head, and pushed his hair away from where it had been stuck to his face. He sat up a bit slowly, pushing himself up with his hands. "...'m awake..." he mumbled as he blinked around the car. A sinking feeling in his stomach brought him out of his sleepy stupor. He cast critical eyes around the car. This wasn't like any train he'd seen before. The design was different. His eyes narrowed, and he frowned. His eyes moved between the individuals in the car, as though he were assessing who may be at fault, be a threat, or at least know something.

"You alright?" he asked Fletcher without looking at him for much longer than a quick glance before going back to his assessment of the car.

"Y-yeah, I'm okay," he stammered. And then, because it seemed important to say, he added, "I had a weird dream..."

He scooted closer to Russel and clung to one of his sleeves as he looked around. He didn't recognize anyone else here, and the moving scenery outside the windows was nothing he'd ever seen before, either. "Um, where are we?" he asked, as though Russel would know.

"For me?" Kotarou repeated, bewildered and scared. A quick glance back told him that others were beginning to wake up, and he dashed forward so he was in front of Reiko instead of between her and the other passengers.

"Why are there so many foreigners?"

Usually, she woke up easily; heat didn't make it harder to do so, rather more easy. And a kid growling and snapping on the seat on the other side of the corridor didn't make it any easier to stay asleep. This time though, it was remarkably hard to struggle in an upright position and shake the sleep from her mind.

She had dreamt. The most annoying thing was that the dream insisted the story it had told was familiar, and her body was insisting with it, but she was quite sure that... sure... Frag it. She'd already forgotten. Grenn stared around the tram car. What in... This design was so ancient even the most curious of history tech museums wouldn't have it! And it was working. Where was she?

That question was then briefly and instantly discarded when she realized that while her prostethics were neatly tucked into a bag beside her that she didn't recognize, her hover chair was nowhere to be seen.

...

That was worse than not knowing where she was, and considering the people around here, she probably couldn't if they'd seen a floating chair. She tried to look around again, but everything was distressingly primitive. She glaced at the person opposite, but they seemed to still be in the process of waking up.

"Yeah, for you, little boy," she said.

Then she turned to look around. Foreigners...? There were a few that she noticed, now that he mentioned it. A lot of people here looked American. (Any classmates she might have had were conveniently hidden by other people.) "That's a good question... Utopia Academy only has Japanese students."

When Fletcher moved in to hold on, Russel wrapped an arm around him protectively. Russel's eyes flicked to the spaces over the doors and the windows, where the line map was usually located. It wasn't there. He frowned deeper. "I'm not sure," he replied. He combed his hair straight back over his head with his fingers, a rather uncharacteristic act for him. "But I'm going to find out."

Gino, currently slumped over someone's shoulder near the end of the carriage, woke quickly enough that the transition from 'fast asleep' to 'faking it rather well' went off without a hitch. Perhaps a slight flicker of his eyelids, or a tensing of muscles, but with the raised voices of teenagers and children around him, they could have been dismissed as the shifting of the tram.

And, really, making obvious movements wouldn't really help any. From what he could gather whilst feigning sleep, he seemed to be in a bad situation. Hostages, maybe? The engine humming beneath them wasn't anything he recognised. And the dream. It was a weird one, alright. Sounded like it came straight out of a classroom. Knights protecting princesses from evil monsters? Like that was news.

He shifted a little, so he could crack one eye open and survey the the other passengers. A girl and a little boy were up at the front talking to the conductor, and some of the others seemed to be awake. He closed his eye again. More worrying was his memory of promising someone something. That could mean anything, and if it meant one thing in particular...

With nothing else to do, he tilted his head and inspected the person he was currently using as a pillow.

Well.

That was interesting.

"O-okay." If Russel said he was going to find out, well, he meant it. Fletcher just hoped they weren't somehow in over their heads.

Again.

Fletcher turned to look out the window. They were traveling over water, toward an island of some sort, it appeared.

Russel finally stood, and stretched his arms far up over his head with a long groan. After that was done, he adjusted his suspenders and tucked his shirt back in. With an adjustment in the folds of his rolled-up sleeves, he seemed satisfied with his state of dress. He pushed his hair back out of his face again. He looked up at it, and tried to part it the way it always had been, but it didn't look right. So he tried the other way. "...Dammit..." he muttered.

Fletcher looked up at Russel as he stood, swinging his legs back and forth under his seat. Something seemed off. "...are you having a bad hair day?" he asked cautiously. Russel's bad hair days were never fun to be around.

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