Introduction!

[utopiamods]

The tram quickly arrives at the academy station, and the students onboard are ushered off and directed to the front lobby of the school. They 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. There's a woman sitting at a desk ready to check everyone in, but she's not important right now; what the students should pay attention to is the large flat-screen TV set into one of the walls. As soon as everyone has gathered inside, it clicks on and starts to play a prerecorded video. A cheerful woman appears on-screen; when she speaks, she's so chipper you might just feel your teeth starting to rot.

"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?

"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!"

A map of the academy appears on-screen. The woman stands green-screened in front of the map.

"Our academy is fully integrated with a virtual network that includes several layers of tactile, empathic holographics geared toward the battle game Exaclan. Exaclan is a game fought between groups of Players using their respective Weapons; if a Player wins a battle, he or she takes possession of the opposing Player's Weapon. This way, Players can own many, many Weapons. Collect them all!

"As for the Weapons, you might be wondering where those come from. Well, as it turns out, only a few of you are going to be Players. The rest of you are Weapons! Players, if you equip your custom-fitted Exaclan gloves, you will be able to unsheathe your weapon from the chest of any Weapon you own."

Meanwhile, behind the woman as she speaks, a stylized cartoon sequence plays out in which a man in knight's garb pulls a sword from the chest of a woman in an elaborate princess gown.

"Now, since you're all just starting out here, you don't own any Weapons yet. In order to take possession of a Weapon, you must ask permission, and then promise to own and protect it. This is very important! Be nice to your Weapons, and in return, they will bring you to victory!

"The items you draw out of your Weapons' chests aren't real; they are part of the holographic Exaclan system. Each person's Weapon will be different, and they aren't just guns or knives, either. Their form is partly determined by the Weapon's personality, but it's partly randomized. Maybe you'll get lucky. Maybe not. It eliminates natural advantages!

"Now, like I said, the Weapons aren't real, but the damage you do in battle is real. You will feel every blow you take from an opponent's Weapon, and physical damage done to your Weapon will damage the person you drew it from, too. So be careful, or you could cause serious damage!"

The woman holds up one finger, grinning ear-to-ear;

"If you win a battle, ownership of the Weapon you fought against transfers to you. You also earn one Token, and you earn an additional Token for every five battles you fight, whether or not you win. Tokens can be used to buy Upgrades, Link Charms, Memory Charms, and Legend Fragments, so do your best to earn as many Tokens as you can!

"Oh, right, about the Memory Charms... you're probably wondering why there are some things you can't remember. That's just a little precaution we took to make sure that you would participate in Exaclan. You've each been stripped of ten memories: Some of them are very important, but some of them aren't. You can purchase a Memory Charm for five Tokens, which means to regain all of your memories will cost fifty Tokens. Ah, there's a catch, though: You can't use the Memory Charms you buy. You have to give them to other people. So get along with your fellow students and make as many friends as you can, okay?

"Now, if you have any other questions, make sure to consult your Exaclan manuals. They will tell you more about the rules of Exaclan, what you can and cannot do with your Weapons, and so forth. Following this video, the list of Players for this Round will be displayed. Anyone not on that list is a Weapon for this Round. Sorry!"

The woman holds one hand up in front of her face apologetically, but continues smiling as ever.

"In conclusion, welcome to Utopia Academy. Let's all do our best and achieve utopia together!"

The video clicks off, replaced by a pale blue screen stating the following:

PLAYERS FOR ROUND -2:
Dave Strider
Gino Weinberg
Grenn Atair
Koharu Izaki
Molly Hayes

((OOC: Feel free to post reactions and general mingling in this post. From here on, you're free to make posts, fight battles, attend class, etc.! If you have any questions, get in touch with a mod.

Edit: A mod mistook how much Memory Charms cost. They're five tokens, not ten. Oops! So the post has been edited slightly. That is all!))

Comments

/EDITS THIS A MILLION TIMES??

[thatguywhohasablog]

Dave suddenly understood very little indeed. This was way more complicated and unfathomable than anything Sburb had thrown at him yet, and he was increasingly certain that this, whatever the hell it was, wasn't part of any instance of the Incipisphere. It just didn't fit. Any freaking out he was doing over this, though, was staying firmly on the inside; he was just going to roll with it for now, at least until he had a better idea of what was going on.

"So I guess that makes me junior fucking nonsensical Pokémon master of pulling swords out of people with the power of friendship. Awesome. Any of you guys feel like letting these magic hands yank shit out of your chest? I promise I'll be gentle. Like a goddamn fall of spring rain or something. Newborn baby deer blinking their massive eyes up at these scarcely inclement weather conditions all over this shit but you won't feel a thing."

[tenwholeryou]

Kotarou had, until this point, been following along with the numb comprehension of a child in over their head. He didn't even listen to the woman in the wall, that was too much; staring around at the others with the suspicion of three months' experience of one blonde man was more than enough to occupy him. But when a foreign boy next to him opened his mouth and managed to say an entire stream of words Kotarou didn't understand..? That was something he could focus on.

"Huh?"

[thatguywhohasablog]

Dave glanced down at the kid without so much as a raised eyebrow. He could have been staring behind his shades, but it was hard to be sure.

"Kinda young for this shit, aren't you?"

[tenwholeryou]

"No!" He wasn't sure what he was meant to be too young for, he'd gathered something of what she'd said about weapons that meant there would be fighting. Which, going by past experience, he'd really rather avoid until he could learn how.
He bristled anyway, now he had a convenient target for his frustration. "None of this makes any sense anyway, you know! People aren't weapons."

[thatguywhohasablog]

"Nah, this is some sparkly metaphorical crap," Dave told him. "Like we're all gonna be standing around making speeches about how pure our hearts are and resurrecting our fallen comrades with the power of our tears and shit while we pull imaginary video game ghost weapons out of each other's sternums."

I'M SORRY DAVE

[tenwholeryou]

Again, Kotarou was left blinking. Was the guy agreeing with him? He couldn't tell. "What?"

<3 :'D

[thatguywhohasablog]

"What? You heard me. Fucking virtual soul swords everywhere, representing the deepest truth of your heart." Dave shrugged. "It's holographic video game magic or some shit."

[tenwholeryou]

"Magic," Kotarou suddenly remembered holding something, scrambling away from a lunging monster. He shook his head to dismiss it, but... "I don't have a sword."

[thatguywhohasablog]

"Yeah I think the idea is some other asshole gets to use the sword after they dislodge it from your chest cavity," said Dave. "Like King Arthur if King Arthur went to some weirdass virtual reality fight school and he couldn't remember what shape his giant table was."

[greennotgold]

Fletcher blinked at Dave. And then blinked again. The words he was speaking sounded like Amestrian, but he had no clue what he'd just said. "Um..."

[thatguywhohasablog]

"Yeah?" Dave glanced at Fletcher, one eyebrow very slightly raised. At first he'd thought pretty much everyone here was older than him, but apparently there were quite a few little kids.

He wasn't sure how he felt about them all speaking to him.

[greennotgold]

"Do, um, do you know what this all means?" he asked. The older boy had sounded rather knowledgable.

[thatguywhohasablog]

Dave shrugged. "Got no idea why we're here or what whoever's in charge of this is doing it for, if that's what you mean. Seems pretty fucking inscrutable to me."

[greennotgold]

Fletcher winced. He was pretty sure his brother didn't want him hearing words like that. "O-oh. I-I see."

He edged away from the older boy.

[thatguywhohasablog]

Clearly Dave was not making a particularly good impression. That was okay. Or it wasn't going to stop him, at least. "I mean I can just about make out the rules of whatever creepy weirdass game this is, but hell if I know what anyone's actually trying to accomplish with this thing. Probably some bullshit like we're all stuck in the virtual reality subconscious of a comatose little girl, and we've gotta accomplish some arbitrary meaningful goal by beating each other to a pulp with the digital friendship manifestations of each other's souls or whatever and then back in the real world the orchestra swells to a crescendo and her eyes flutter open and her lonely CEO father finally knows what it's like to be loved."

[greennotgold]

Fletcher just stared.

That was pretty specific for a random guess, or at least he thought so, but it was mostly just confusing.

He didn't really know what to say to any of it, so he just repeated, "...oh."

[thatguywhohasablog]

Dave looked back at Fletcher for a moment. He could have kept going, possibly indefinitely. Normally the incomprehension of whoever he was talking to didn't put him off in the slightest, but then again normally he wasn't talking to people face to face, and when he was they weren't usually kids younger than he was who'd apparently been abducted to take part in some kind of bizarre virtual reality combat game and had their memories erased.

Dave Strider didn't particularly pride himself on compassion, but Fletcher's eyes were very big.

He shrugged again, and said, "I don't know. Some kind of weird interdimensional social experiment, I guess." He paused. "Are you, uh, okay there?"

ilu ildave ileverything

[bitofafiction]

"I find myself bizarrely tempted by your kind offer," Sherlock comments.

Let's rewind:

There's a seventeen-year-old boy in a white button-down shirt and black leather jacket lurking near the back of the room. He was probably one of the last to straggle in; he doesn't take well to being shooed. But here he is, listening carefully to every word of that astonishing presentation, and when the list of players comes up on the screen he commits the names to memory and makes his leisurely way through the room to eavesdrop on everyone present.

Whereupon, hearing Dave's delightful little speech, he stops for a chat.

<3

[thatguywhohasablog]

"Yeah? Well that's a relief," says Dave, deadpan, looking up at the older boy with rather more honest self-assurance than is really usual for a thirteen-year-old. "Was getting pretty fucking worried I wasn't gonna have anyone to haul any kind of virtual reality spirit machete out of. If your refined British ass is being sarcastic about this my heart is going to literally fucking break in half."

[bitofafiction]

"No," he answers with the barest hint of a smile, "I hasten to reassure you, my statement was entirely genuine. Your mildly uncouth Texan heart is quite safe."

[thatguywhohasablog]

"My mildly uncouth Texan heart is leaping for joy inside my mildly uncouth Texan chest," Dave assures him, although by all outward appearances he seems pretty indifferent. "There's some seriously delirious feats of athletic fervor going on beneath this stoic exterior right now, it's unreal."

[bitofafiction]

His smile widens.

"I'll have to take your word for it."

[thatguywhohasablog]

"Yep," says Dave. He holds out his hand. "Dave Strider. I guess right now I'm still Mildly Uncouth but I'm pretty sure if I really put the effort in I can get to Profanity Musketeer by the end of this evening."

[bitofafiction]

Sherlock smiles, shakes Dave's hand, and replies after an exquisitely calculated pause:

"Sherlock Holmes. It is a pleasure to make your acquaintance, Mr Strider."

[thatguywhohasablog]

Dave raises his eyebrows, a little bit. "Sherlock Holmes," he repeats. "So did your parents hate you or are you just delusional or something? Either way I'm seriously disappointed by the lack of hat and pipe shit going on here."