ROUND -1

[utopiamods]

This morning, the marks of ownership disappear from the bodies of every Weapon who was owned during the previous round. The woman from the introductory video appears on the Exaclan video screens across campus, and on all of the computer screens as well.

She doesn't look very happy.

"My, you weren't very enthusiastic this time, were you?" she says, frowning and waving one finger in disappointment. "That's no good. If you don't fight, you can't earn Tokens to buy your powers or your memories back! If you don't even have those, imagine how hard it'll be to earn Legend Fragments!"

She smiles; the shift from her previous expression is sudden and startling. "You know, if you hear the legend, you just might learn a few things!

"We didn't want to do this, but it looks like we're going to have to. Okay! From now on, Players, you can only go three days without fighting. After that, we'll start taking away one Token a day. And you want your Tokens, don't you?" She smiles even more widely, as though she has no idea why anyone might be upset at being forced into such a situation. "To get you all started, we've given you some free tokens! You already had three each, you know, and we've added seven more. That means you all have ten tokens, so visit a booth and get spending."

She pauses, and then snaps her fingers, "Ah, but only Players can do that, so if any of your Weapons want to buy something, you should do it for them, okay?

"I know you can do it! Believe in yourselves and each other, and you'll achieve utopia!

"Now, here are the Players for this round!"

The screen goes blank, and the following appears:

PLAYERS FOR ROUND -1:
Fletcher Tringham
Kevin Smith
Mei Chang
Meryl Silverburgh
Oichi
Suzaku Kururugi
Tsuki Aoi

Comments

[tenwholeryou]

"Dave!" Kotarou didn't look particularly happy. He also didn't look particularly able to breathe; he'd just sprinted across the room. "Why aren't you my Player any more?" He waved his hand in front of the older boy's face, in case he'd missed the conspicuous lack of marks. "What am I supposed to do now?"

[thatguywhohasablog]

"I guess they want to shake things up to keep it fair or whatever," said Dave with a shrug. "Let everyone get a shot at being battlepimp, you know? Obviously you're not gonna get anyone as good as me to team up with this round, so just find some lesser guy who doesn't look like too much of a complete tool and hang in there or something."

[tenwholeryou]

"But I don't know anyone else!"

Well, that was a lie. He knew Ichi and Kallen, but Ichi was weird even if she'd told him they were friends, and he didn't see Kallen's name up there. "What if they want to use my weapon?"

He paused, then blinked. Actually, Dave had to find a Player too, didn't he? It was a weird thought.

[thatguywhohasablog]

Dave considered this for a moment, looking up at the list of players. He recognized a few of the names, but – hmm.

"Well I talked to that Tringham kid last time round," he said, pointing. "He was all about not wanting to fight and shit, so unless he's done some kind of psychotic bloodthirsty 180 since then he'd probably be cool with it. He seemed like a total pushover, you should ask him."

[tenwholeryou]

"But then I wouldn't get any memories back," he pointed out. Though the idea of a pushover kid was tempting, didn't that mean that he wouldn't be very good at protecting his weapons?

[thatguywhohasablog]

Dave shrugged. "You just gotta hold tight until it's your turn to be a Player. Anyway, you've still got tokens, right? You could probably get him to buy you a memory charm or whatever, at least you can trust a guy like him not to just take your money." He was looking at the list again. "But probably a whole lot of these guys are okay. Just ask around or something, shouldn't be too hard to find someone who's not a total douchebag."

He stopped, remembering something.

"Oh, hey, I almost forgot. I got you these." He produced a pair of sunglasses from his pocket, holding them out to Kotarou. "This way nobody'll be able to tell when you're giving them the stink eye."

8D

[tenwholeryou]

Kotarou nodded along, sneaking speculative glances at the others as they mingled around the area. There were some people he wouldn't approach in a thousand years, but others... he began to feel a little better about the situation.

Then Dave handed him a pair of sunglasses, and he felt a lot better.

"Then what's the point of giving them the stink eye?" He retorted, even as he carefully unfolded them and put them on. It took him two tries to get them balanced - after leaning to check Dave's, he worked out that they needed to be hooked over his ears - and then he grinned up at his ex-Player. "Do they look cool?"

BDD

[thatguywhohasablog]

"The private stink eye gets you beat up less," Dave told him. Of course, he himself never gave anybody the stink eye, mainly because his facial expression was close to motionless at least 80% of the time. Now was one of the rare exceptions, though: when Kotarou put the sunglasses on, Dave smiled slightly, and nodded. "They look cool."