ORIENTATION

[allforevil]

[When you start to stir from your slumber, you awaken to the smell of dust and rotted wood. Your bed is far from comfortable -- lumps in the mattress, a tattered blanket that barely keeps you warm and a pillow almost as hard as a rock-- and you'll immediately see there are others in your room with you.

All of you are confused, surely. "Where am I?" "What place is this?" Questions like that stir through your mind while you take in your surroundings. Something might catch your eye before anything else, though. A coloured chest tied with a bow, a large gift tag is attached to it with your name on it. There's one for everyone in each dorm, and if you open it you'll find:

An old, worn school uniform.
A colourful costume.
And a pamphlet with information about you, about your stay in this Academy, and a map of the layout of the school and the training grounds outside. The descriptions are vague, leaving out important details about your new super powers called "Quirks", a bland description about how you were selected to join the Academy called "VA" (no explanation what it means), and even the map has lame descriptions of locations that don't really give you a good idea of where you're staying.

Before you can start exploring, or chatting away with your neighbors, a voice rings over old intercoms. It sounds low and comforting, like a long lost friend. But there's something about that that feels.. unsettling. A feeling in your gut that this voice was anything but friendly.

"Welcome, students. You must be very confused, but I assure you I'll be able to answer all the questions you have in just a few minutes.

For now, relax, explore, and meet your new classmates who will be staying with you during this semester.

Oh, but..... whatever you do, don't enter the dining room."

The intercom cuts off, leaving you with a cryptic message to think about on top of.. everything else you're dealing with right now.]

Comments

[iseedollpeople]

No. The architecture.

[Sometimes she's a very literal girl, it just comes out sideways because she is herself.

Though, she crosses her arms and seems to give it a bit of thought; she probably heard the intent behind the question itself, at least. At length:]

It's being used as a school again, but it isn't one. So...

[notbymyside]

[It is indeed a difficult conversation to follow, but that's fine. Ango is used to talking with people who are difficult to understand.]

That gives it a rather foreboding feeling.

[iseedollpeople]

I don't think it needs to be given one.

[notbymyside]

Perhaps not.

[A pause.}

What should I call you?

[Just to get the name part out of the way.]

[iseedollpeople]

[Ah. She really doesn't have as much cause to use anybody's name here just yet, and maybe there was a part of her that had been running on assumptions from her old school. Nametags have always been a thing, even if here they've been used to decorate the dorms. She's not used to dorms either.

Be that as it may.]

... Misaki Mei.

[...]

[This is where the question should perhaps be posed back, but she merely tilts her head -- maybe questioning, maybe just at the suddenness of the introductions. Formalities seem somehow strange here, even if she'll go along with them in front of an adult.]

[notbymyside]

[Look, he needs names to know what to call people!]

Very well. I'm Ango Sakaguchi.

[He can tell that this conversation is difficult for her, though, so he won't press the issue much.]

I'm going to be collecting information on this place. If you find anything that may be useful in helping us escape, will you please notify me?

[iseedollpeople]

[Names are for people with continuous social contact and a recognizable society, obviously. The jury might still be out on that one, as with a lot of things right now. Though it isn't so much a difficult topic as a bit of a tangled one that's only getting more tangled, albeit in a different way.

The tilt of her head becomes slightly more pronounced.]

Ango... Sakaguchi-san.

[It's repeated halfway to herself, a bit searchingly. Familiar, but not so familiar that she's read his work -- that's probably where she's at right now.]

... I can notify you. We haven't found any barriers yet, though.

[notbymyside]

[That semi-familiarity might be a common thread with all the Japanese students here, but nobody has spoken to Ango about it yet, so he is unaware of it.]

I haven't either, but they may be further out. Or the remoteness of the location may act as a barrier in of itself.

[iseedollpeople]

[Give her like 30 seconds to process--]

An essayist of the early 20th century. I think.

[It is halfway to herself, but she's making no attempt to talk around it or anything. After everything else that's happened here some dude stealing pseudonyms (??) might be the least of their worries. Given. The name on her own pamphlet and presumably others.

There's a brief shrug, either for that or--]

The remoteness, yes. The rest...

[Her tone says she's undecided, one way or the other.]

[notbymyside]

[That first part catches his attention.]

...pardon?

[iseedollpeople]

Someone I know of, but didn't read. He wrote about war, a long time ago.

You remind me of his pen name, but maybe that's a part of this place...?

[For the first time, something almost like a smile flits across her face, shadowy but definitively present. She certainly does have the strangest luck with names.]

[notbymyside]

That...could be. There was indeed a war in my world recently, but I was a child during it. I would have little reason to write about it.

[He's curious about that smile, though. What is she thinking? It just makes him want to find out more about her.]

[iseedollpeople]

Then maybe you were named after him.

[It might be the first time she's really heard of someone being named after a pen name, but the world is vast, as their present circumstances are starting to show. She's been learning more about that recently, but this sure is a crash course.]

I was born after the wars, so... there were other things.

[To explore, to worry about, who knows.]

[notbymyside]

Maybe.

[And there's another jump in her logic. He's beginning to notice the jumps, and he takes a moment to try to work backwards and see where that sentence came from.]

Do you...were you named after someone?

[iseedollpeople]

I wasn't. But my name might be bad luck.

[There's a lighter lilt to that, even if it doesn't sound like a joke, either way.]

[notbymyside]

Luck is subjective. And even if it wasn't, 'Mei' is a common enough of a name to be neutral in luck.

[iseedollpeople]

Misaki.

[That seems to be her entire opinion on the subject.]

[notbymyside]

[Ah. A family curse, then.]

I still have my doubts.

[A curse on a family can't be real, right? Then again, magical powers are real, so maybe someone is targeting the family as a curse...or something.]

[iseedollpeople]

[A tilt of the head -- unsmiling, but there's something almost amused in it all the same when she meets his eye.]

... If you'd like. It's not the sort of thing that would be affected by belief, anyway.