EVENT - AWAKENING

[harmonizemods]

Who: PCs, ???
Where: Classrooms, ???
When: Monday, April 17, immediately after normal classes.
What: It's time.

The call came abruptly at the end of the day, as the students were preparing to end their normal session and proceed to their specialty classes. It was a small thing, easily forgotten: a staff member at the entrance to a few particular homerooms, asking one or two students to meet in the main hall. It was a little peculiar, to be sure, but they were only two weeks into the school year, after all--most students just shrugged it off as one of Chitoku's oddities.

Taue Shinichiro. Hazama Miyume. Tanemoto Ryuta. Kasubata Shizuru. Imaizumi Mirai. Uehara Himeko. Shikata Haruka.

Those called couldn't have been more different. What common thread could possibly have them brought together, few could fathom.

OOC note: Please keep everything in the same thread. Also, I'd like to keep up a fairly brisk pace, but I'll do my best to accommodate everyone. And please feel free to come into the chat at http://webchat.freenode.net, channel #harmonizerpg, for discussion!

Comments

[harmonizenpc]

The staffer looked at Mirai with those flat eyes, a look that seemed almost annoyed, before going off to retrieve the Evoker he'd so carelessly tossed aside. Yachiyo, a cloud over her brow, seemed about to go rectify the situation, but a hand tapped her shoulder before she could go anywhere.

"Pardon me. May I handle this?"

Frowning sharply, Yachiyo nonetheless ceded the floor, and a small woman in a neatly tailored suit stepped out from her vantage point behind the center of the group to approach the recalcitrant young man.

"Imaizumi-kun?" She smiled and offered a polite bow. "Sekimiya Isora, the guidance counselor. It's a pleasure to meet you. I'm well acquainted with your father... As I recall, in fact, he was quite adamant about your being in the first group selected."

[burningbow]

Mirai had been keeping a wary eye on the scientists. Now the space between his ears began to fill, not with defiance at the small woman's words but an obsession about unraveling the truth out of them. He said no word of any kind. He simply could not imagine this ever being the truth. He stood there feeling every bit the young man he was, and detoured into a daydream of confrontation.

It was a struggle, but his mind sparked, found a creative way around the problem.

"I know," he lied. "He told me."

[harmonizenpc]

"Oh, is that so?"

The lightness to her voice made it sound as though the comment were nothing. But the look in her eyes made it clear that she knew he was lying, and she wanted him to know that. "All the more a pity that you won't accept it, then. He was so proud that his son was among our brightest hopes for the future--I would hate to see your relationship damaged over such a small thing."

[burningbow]

Mirai had a growing feeling, a strong belief, that he would not escape using false pretenses. Now he had to think about what the truth could do. First, that it could be twisted to reveal anything he wanted it to say. Second, that it could be well hidden when he wanted it. Truly his father had hidden it well.

She smiled. He smiled. Then he dodged that attempt to yank his chain. Did he look particularly guilt-ridden? "My father... Prove myself to be a worthy son? I wonder what he would say were I to refuse." He sounded curious - and thought about either path. "I am quite sure I'm a disappointment to him already. Now, if it's all the same to you, I'll be going now."

[harmonizenpc]

Again Yachiyo moved to rectify the situation, and again Sekimiya held up a hand to forestall her.

"Then I recommend you take this last chance to redeem yourself. Certainly you two have had your differences in the past; I would hate to see what might happen were you to refuse this opportunity."

[burningbow]

Mirai's mind sparked again, in between the advice Sekimiya was giving him to atone and her warning that he would be outcast. So the two had been talking about him after all, and it was such a certainty that he almost had a smile playing on his lips. But it was wiped from his face when the staffer came over towards him and the wakizashi was offered a second time.

As she held it, a mischief came burning right behind his eyes. They wanted this one thing from him? He might take more from them still. "... Okay. I don't have to do anything else, right? Then you should've said so. It would have saved this misunderstanding," he rebuked, speaking with great boredom. He put his left hand over the hilt of the wakizashi. He did, really and truly, love fooling people.

And it was not long before he was doing what they wanted him to, when he took the blade at last. He switched it back on, a pale blue light unlike the unnatural shades that had come into existence all around them. It heated up the air. He was sweating with intense fear. It appeared on his face for a heartbeat.

The next second, the wakizashi was in his stomach. He buried the weapon to its hilt and cut to the side. He did not move or speak. He was simply crooked there, looking numb. A cold numbness - spreading across him. He imagined his blood running over his clothes. When he pulled the blade out and kept it half-steady in his hand, he had a feeling of something heating up at his core, bright and all-consuming.

Now he felt his mind fill, not with the anger or the pain, but with the primal sense of something trying to escape, and it was raising its head in defiance against his will. There was a strangled gasp from deep within his throat. It hurt so badly coming out! The floor was suddenly growing closer, and he felt it - hard - and rolled over onto his side, clinging to the blade half-embedded in his stomach as everything was going out of focus.

After this the heat reached his heart, and exploded inside him so much that some force seemed to be rolling him over onto his back and burning open his eyes. His vision was red. He was protected by scales, circled and circled around him in a wall, with three serpentine heads coming from the same body that seemed to look around hungrily at everything in the room.

"Varsavarti?"