Let The Games Begin

[magicademymods]

February Event and Intro Log Orientation Week/Magic Mayhem The campus of Diatu Magicademy stretches out before you, confused and chaotic and surging with energy. Where are you headed? To your dorm or suite, to get settled? Maybe you need some food now? Wherever you head off to as your first stop, you have to deal with the snow. Helpful or proud students are passing out various magical remedies to get you where you need to be -- umbrellas with a nasty tendency to dump snow directly onto other people nearby, an iron tube that projects fire but appears to have no off switch, snowshoes that keep you slightly too high off the snow and thus provide no friction for stopping... Familiar Follies Familiars do not harass or harm each other as a rule -- but that doesn't mean they have no pecking order, and the week of Orientation finds them all jockeying for status and position as suits them. This can take the form of pranks, displays, competitions, or simple physical assertiveness towards each other. The goal is simply to be seen as superior by the student body. New wizards especially may find themselves surprised at this behavior of their familiars... Research On the Sundered With the arrival of the Sundered come those wizards engaged in research on their presence here, now set to investigate what brought them here and how to get them home. All Sundered students are asked to meet with representatives of the research team, to introduce themselves and relate what they will of their homes. In addition, the team requests samples of blood, hair, and skin -- carefully magically collected, and the researchers will sign in the presence of the Sundered a Glyphed contract that forbids them from using the samples for a purpose they know will be harmful. (They quite understand your reasons to be suspicious of this collection! And they will not compel anyone who refuses even given these conditions.) Furthermore, they request to perform a few spells on you for testing purposes. It is, quite regrettably, possible that if you consent to this testing, you will come away with a temporary side effect -- a slight change of hair color, traveling two steps for every one you take, one hand moving about a second behind the arm it should be attached to, or being ridden by a penguin. No need to worry, these changes won't last more than a day! Wonders Await Diatu Magicademy is open to you in all its glory. Have fun!

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[nobodys_puppet]

Xion pulled up to her knees and glanced back, one gloved hand going to make sure her hood was still down. She didn't know what to do. How was she supposed to blend into the darkness surrounded by all this cold white snow?

[burningbrighter]

"It's okay. Hey. Do you understand what I'm saying?"

She remained crouched there, despite the cold seeping into her limbs. She could be patient when someone needed help.

[nobodys_puppet]

"I understand the words," Xion said after a long moment when she tried to make a Dark Portal and failed. And she did understand the words. Just not why they were being said to her.

[burningbrighter]

"Okay. That's good. Um...hi. I'm Sunset. I'm a new student at the school. And I wanted to make sure you were okay."

Why was she so afraid? It really worried her.

[nobodys_puppet]

A small nod. "And now you made sure, so you can leave." And Xion can go back to trying to find a way out of this place.

[burningbrighter]

"But I heard you fall. If you're hurt, I can help...my familiar's actually good at that. I know he looks creepy, but he means well."

She extended her arm, where the tentacled eye-creature sat, waving one of its eyes at the hooded figure.

[nobodys_puppet]

"It doesn't matter if I am hurt." Why would something like that matter?

[burningbrighter]

"Because everyone matters," Sunset whispered, clutching a hand to her heart. She'd learned this lesson so recently.

"I know it's hard when you feel ignored. But people are wrong to ignore you. Everyone has something to contribute here...and you deserve help as much as anyone else does."

[nobodys_puppet]

"Perhaps every person matters, but I am a Nobody. I do not." Matter, that is.

[burningbrighter]

"That's...that's not right," Sunset frowned. "Who told you that you were nobody?"

[nobodys_puppet]

"It is what I am..." Xion shrugged softly. "I am a Nobody who shouldn't even exist." More even than most Nobodies.

[burningbrighter]

Sunset really, really didn't like this. But maybe she needed to change her approach here.

"Well, you do exist. I know it's scary, but it can be full of fun too. You could learn magic like you've never seen before!"

[nobodys_puppet]

Xion shook her head. "I know magic. It doesn't work here." Not the point. She shook her head under the hood. "Nobodies don't exist, and I exist less than any of us."

[burningbrighter]

"How can I be talking to you if you don't exist? I mean...unless I don't exist either?"

Sunset shook herself off of a potential existential crisis by switching gears. "Yeah, my magic was taken too. But we're here to learn new magic!"

[nobodys_puppet]

"Do you have a heart?" It might seem like a subject change, but it was not.

[burningbrighter]

"Are we talking about the internal organ or...like, having empathy? Because I think I have both, still?"

What an odd question.

[nobodys_puppet]

"Nobodies have neither. We are not people. And we are not meant to be seen."

[burningbrighter]

"So you're...different, huh? Look. There's something pretty important I learned back home."

She took in a breath and offered her hand again.

"It doesn't matter where you came from, or what you were 'meant' to do. You still have a choice. Especially here, when all the things that mattered in your home world aren't here to hold you back anymore. I think we were chosen to do this for a reason...and that means you too."

spoiler dump for days. (Taken both ways.)

[nobodys_puppet]

"A choice?" Xion snapped in a rare flash of temper. "My choice was to die and have everyone forget me. If people here are building memories of me here, then what was the point?!"

What was the point of fighting Axel... of making Roxas kill her? Her head dropped. What had been the point of any of it, if she couldn't even sacrifice herself properly?

[burningbrighter]

"This place is separate from where we were," she frowned. "I don't know how our worlds will be affected. I wish I knew. But that sounds like a lot for one person to go through."

Sunset's heart ached. No one should have had to make that choice.

[nobodys_puppet]

"I've been to other worlds before. She was supposed to erase memories of me from all of them! If she didn't... if... if we failed..." her voice trailed off, her shoulders slumped. Roxas......


Oh Roxas. Axel. What had she done. Was she too much a coward to die, even now?

[burningbrighter]

"Maybe you didn't fail. Maybe there's another way...or maybe we're frozen in time somewhere..."

She sighed. "I know it's hard. But I think it's too early to give up when we don't really know what happened to us, or what's happening to our worlds."

[nobodys_puppet]

"There is no other way, if I stay here, if anyone remembers me, they will find me."

She wasn't sure which that would be worse. Axel finding her and bringing her back... or Xemnas finding her and destroying her utterly.

[burningbrighter]

"Who are they?"

[nobodys_puppet]

Since there were multiple answers to that, Xion turned away. "Either way it will be bad," she said, softly. "Go and forget you met me. It is the only way to do what is right."