Open Log

[zombnambulist]

Who: Madotsuki, YOU
Where: Anywhere
When: Backdated to July 19th
What: The dreamer explores her new world.
Warnings: Stabbing-prone child.

There was only one door in the nexus. Different, but not unusual. The door was new, in red and black. She went.

A classroom. Empty, a scrawl of notes on the board, left over from a class that would never be in attendance. An eraser sat underneath, teasing a teacher's laziness as she read the gibberish: FORWARD TILT SIDE SMASH LEDGE ATTACK DOWN AERIAL UP THROW. A cheat code? She grasped the eraser, thumbs twitching over it, UUDDLRLRAB. Classic, simple, accessible. Reaching as far up as she could, she erased the bottom half of the code. Nothing happened. She needed height. Later.

She walked to the window. A big city with purple scratches over the sky, like a big cat had run its claws through the stratosphere. Her eraser made little clouds of choking dust as she patted it against the windowsill. Was that a new one? It didn't feel like a new one. She left it tehre.

There were doors. More classrooms? Hallways? She'd look around.

A small, quiet, unfamiliar girl stepped into the halls of Smash Academy, her eyes shut tight as she looked around.

Comments

[punchtheflute]

Sonny was kind of a busy guy lately.

People needed help with the little shadow bug monsters, and he was happy to do that. Plus, he had his Ukulele lessons and his job and friends to visit and things that needed to be done. Not to mention food that needed eating and naps that needed taking. Busy, busy, busy!

So, he was walking kind of quickly down the corridor (Quickly for him, anyway.) when he spotted a kid he'd never seen before.

....well. He could take a couple of minutes out of his day to make a new person feel welcome. Especially being as she looked kind of young and was by herself - what if one of the little Primids spotted her and attacked? He should walk her to her dorm, or at least to where there were other people. There was no harm in that, right? Besides. He loved kids!

"Hi!" He said, waving to her and grinning. "You're new, right? My name is Sonny Moe! Did you need help finding anything around here?"

[zombnambulist]

This wasn't a school she'd been in. Maybe she'd imagined it, or seen it on TV. Everything seemed a bit bigger than normal. Built for bigger people, bigger world, bigger reality. Size didn't matter here.

Silence in the hall was a standard. A faint tinnitus, snatches of words without a source, the white noise indicative of a school. Expected. Far less expected: entire words. Clear, spoken, directed words.

She turned to observe the source. The notion of being stared at through closed eyes might be weird to some, but this was Sonny after all.

Inhabitants weren't supposed to speak. They weren't even supposed to look. They stood still, and ignored, or cowered, or attacked. His hand waved back and forth. An invitation. A trap? Slowly, the girl turned to face him fully.

[punchtheflute]

Well. She didn't seem like an especially... excitable child. More like quiet and reserved. Maybe she was just shy?

He lowered himself down on one knee so he was a little closer to her level.

"Well, anyway, welcome to the school! I hope you have a lot of fun, here!"

Oh! Wait a second...

He rummaged around in the pocket of his cargo shorts for a second. His hand emerged filled with brightly colored, foil and cellophane wrapped candies. He always carried a few around just in case of sudden hunger pangs. But considering he'd eaten not too long ago, he could give some up and he knew that all kids loved candy! This would be a perfect ice breaker! (...unless her parents were sensible and had taught her not to accept candy from strange guys. Sonny's sole parent had been a slightly grouchy, mountain dwelling, panda monster lady. In consequence, he'd accept candy from pretty much anyone and saw no harm in offering it to anyone.)

"Here! You could have these, if you're hungry?"

[zombnambulist]

"Hun...gry?"

She hadn't eaten for a long time. That was because she didn't need to eat, she didn't have to. The stranger was trying to offer her candy, to bring her down to a baser level. It as a trap, a poor one, too obvious.

Somewhere far away, a little girl's stomach growled in her sleep. Maybe it would have an effect, locked inside?

She picked a few out of the large figment's hand, and studied them. They made crinkling noises, but that was it. Worthless. They dropped straight through the back of her hand and pattered on the floor, and she curled her lip.

[punchtheflute]

"You could have those ones. Whichever ones you wa--hey! I think I have some root beer barrels in my pocket too. Do you like those? Let me find... them..."

Huh. Before he could even reach for his pocket again, the candies she'd been looking at fell onto the floor. Right through her hand. Right... through her hand.

Was she a ghost? Sonny didn't really do well with ghosts. In fact Sonny was entirely terrified by ghosts. And this probably showed on his face for a moment.

No. Wait. She picked the candy up first. That means she couldn't be a ghost. Ghosts can't touch things like that. Right? That's why Conchita couldn't eat me. Right? She's not a ghost. I just imagined that the candy fell through her hand. Probably she just normally dropped them like a normal person drops things. Even I drop things sometimes. It's all OK. It's aaaalllll OK.

"...It's OK. Don't worry that you dropped them." he said, forcing a smile and scooping them off the floor easily enough, being as he was kneeling. "Five second rule, right? Twenty five second rule if you're really hungry."

[zombnambulist]

Her snarl spreads. He wants to catch her in a loop, insist upon his trap. As if she'd fall that easy, as if she's a baser creature. Smiling, kind, offering, soft, the biggest monsters of all. She saw it, the truth, the anger at her denial, before his mask came back. A coward who can't even admit he's a monster. He'll show his face, take hold of her once the jaws snap shut.

"Liar."

This monster will be honest, and brave. A coward won't strike first.

Her hand had been emptied, and now it was not. The knife flashed at him.

[fakespeech]

Ecolo has taken a habit of wandering around places as well. Fun never stayed in one place, he had learned, and he would go to wherever fun was. That was what Ecolo was doing at the moment too: looking for something fun to do. And when you're trying to have fun, you end up talking to the first person you run across.

When Ecolo noticed Madotsuki looking around the classrooms, he approached her without a second thought.

"Hello, braided-hair girl! Do you know anything fun we can do~?"

[zombnambulist]

In turn, she did not look twice at the ethereal shadow that rushed alongside her, beyond the natural tensing of muscles that came with any approaching entity. The shadow was noisy. Insolent. She kept walking, without missing a step.

"I do." Her voice was a soft rasp. "It's called the quiet game."

[fakespeech]

"Quiet game, huh? Okay!" Ecolo went quiet after that, but he didn't move away from Madotsuki. Instead, he trailed after her quietly, floating in air as he did.

It didn't take long for Ecolo to start making weird faces and poses in silent, though. For a shadow, he sure didn't know how to stay quiet.

[zombnambulist]

She'd never gotten to suggest it before. The quiet game was only ever offered to bothersome people. Most bothersome people knew to stay quiet around her already. Still, the shadow played. Poses and faces, she could handle. Once or twice, she stuck her tongue out right back at him.

A shadow in the halls of a school, begging for games. Someplace it was not wanted, needed but rejected, incessantly following even after silenced. Lost, forgotten, strangled in academia. For a few minutes, she accepted her company, for pity and nostalgia.

For a few minutes, and no longer. She wasn't a kid anymore, and such desires to play had no place here. She'd moved beyond them. Also she got bored of it following her. There was one easy way to wash out a shadow.

Madotsuki stopped in her tracks, tapped at her chest, and had a lamppost for a head.

[fakespeech]

This shadow, however, was not the kind that would disappear from mere light. As the other used one of her abilities, Ecolo gave an exclamation, breaking the silence.

"Wow! You can turn your head into a lamp! That's so cool~" He blinked then, realizing he just lost the quiet game. "Oh no, I broke the game rule! Aww... But you should tell me your name. My name is Ecolo! Nice to meet you~"

A shadow that doesn't know when to leave, yes. That was Ecolo.

[roses_are_blue]

Maybe this girl made his way into Garry's office, which was really coming together in the past few weeks.

It had been too long. In fact, when Garry arrived, everything was bare in this room. The school really made it clear that he was gone for a while. When he visited his old room, it smelled of unused must and dust. The floors were filthy, the window smeared.

Work needed to be done, and he needed to keep his mind busy. Thankfully, he was a good cleaning man; his blood and tears went into cleaning and upkeep.

He spent a few days doing this, there might be a soft smell of pine cleaner, and lemon spray. A simple desk was in the center of the room but the walls were adorned with various paintings and art supplies meant to be stored.

This was a studio for him as well, after all.

[zombnambulist]

The door was not locked, and that served as all the invitation she needed. The room was clean, fresh, crisp, the start of something new. Prepared and waiting for the dust to pile, junk to stack and the care to fade away, just as before. A good writer knows the ending before the story even starts. It's all going to the same result.

She padded into the room, glancing over the artwork. But there was the shrine, the center, the clear point. Paint and decor all to serve as background for the highlight.

Rather than walk around the desk, the little girl squirmed, hopped, writhed her way onto the top, lying on her belly. Arms dangling over the edge and head observing from the optimal upside-down angle, Madotsuki went about pulling at the drawers of what would soon be a formerly organized desk.

[roses_are_blue]

He went down to the teacher's lounge for some coffee, so he didn't know he had a guest. Until he walked on in, that is.

He almost spilled his coffee at the sight of a stranger now laying on his desk. It was surely random enough to cause shock, but he actually tried hard to hold it in. He just cleaned this floor.

"Ah, hello?" Garry said softly toward his new guest.

[zombnambulist]

"Hi low."

She spoke at little more than a mumble, her gaze still fixed on the drawers she rifled through unpermitted.

"Where can a conversation go at the start...? From the top, to the bottom. What's underneath it all?"

Pens and papers start getting tossed out onto the floor.

[roses_are_blue]

Garry didn't understand this at all. If he had half a mind, he would start maybe having a fit about how this girl thought it was okay to come into his office and rummage through his stuff without his permission.

But he honestly didn't know where to go with this. She wasn't acting right in the very slightest, and that concerned him. Concern was a little more prominent than the anger.

"I beg your pardon?" Garry started. "Miss, I'm quite lost. Is there something you actually need from me?"

Oh no, and he just cleaned this floor. He tried to not get upset.

[insanecharisma]

Soryk moved in haste, as he usually did. The elven man was brusque, to the point, concise, and very rarely gave himself time for luxurious wanton behaviour. Or anything that might possibly count as such. When the classes weren't in session, it gave him peace of mind to use the technologically advanced tools the academy had to offer without diving into his own engineering.

Better yet, sometimes he could combine his entrepreneur ideas with what was already before him and just make it all the better. At the end of the day, however, his knowledge was still nothing compared to a goblin's.

Poisons was where he was better suited, and that meant constantly grinding, constantly boiling, constantly extracting and testing. What was effective against what. How could he use it to his benefit. A plethora of questions and not so many answers as he would have liked.

But that was what he was in the midst of doing when he found Madotsuki. A couple of vials in one gloved hand, daggers in their sheaths at opposite sides of his belt, and a bundle of plants in the other grasp.

"Girl," he addressed her. "If you insist upon walking around willfully blinded, then you will find yourself stumbling somewhere that you ought not to."

[zombnambulist]

Wow. Okay. There was inane, and then there was this garbage.

There was nowhere she "ought not" to be. Or rather, her oughtenness in regards to location meant nothing, and everyone knew it. There was only one reason to bring it up in the first place, beyond being an insolent moron.

"You have something to hide."

He had been obvious from the start, generally more of genre than she went into. Complicated games, too much going on, exasperating. Her head tilted as she looked over this vials and herbs. A scientist gardener. All the flags were waving at an important figment. Her knife came out. She had no time for rude people.

"Give it."

[insanecharisma]

He had a plethora of things to hide. None of which he had planned on sharing with her or anyone else. Zelda potentially, but likely not, considering he could easily foretell how things would end up. That meant keeping most things to himself, including any of the things that he had to hide.

When the girl continued, he didn't know what to make of it, so he offered over the flasks and the plants. Even though she couldn't see them.

"I am the instructor for the poisons composition class. I was in the midst of some research when I came across you."

[zombnambulist]

Someone who was everything and everywhere didn't need eyes to see. Admittedly, she was just herself, and right there, but eyes still factored little into the equation. She reached up to take the flasks and plants from him, holding them close to her face to observe.

"Eating away, from the inside. Inside-ous."

Was that a pun? She delivered it less like a pun and more like she didn't know how to pronounce it. She raised her head to stare at him, for a given definition of the word.

"Researching spite, and hate, and lies?"

[insanecharisma]

He didn't get it. Obviously. The girl spoke in riddles and just the way she moved had him set on edge. No ordinary child was she. He knew it from just those words they exchanged with one another.

His long eyebrows knit together and when she continued, he reached over for his things again, if she'd let him have them back. And if she didn't he supposed he'd have to spend a few more days and nights in the forest collecting.

"People do not need to research any of those. They are all inherent traits, no matter what race a person might be." At least from his own observation. He never could say that all people were the same, but from a majority, everyone knew how to hate and lie alike.

[birdlady]

"Good after...noon...?" Melia attempted to greet the girl but trailed off as she just wandered past her like she wasn't even there. And were her eyes closed? How odd?

"Pardon me!" She called after the girl. "Are you lost? Do you need help?"

[zombnambulist]

The figments around here had an awful lot of variety when it came to appearance, but she had pieced together their common theme: they were noisy, and unbelievably nosy.

School, the beginning of social life, where a child started making friends, making connections, learning how the world worked. They'd play nice for now, they'd color in the lines and lay out the rules and establish the rules. They wanted to teach her. A teacher was above a student. A pecking order was being established. She wouldn't be the worm.

"There is no lost." She looked back at the lady with the feathers. "There's only places."

[birdlady]

"Ah... of course." Now Melia was the one who was lost. This girl was odd and she wasn't sure how to proceed. But she couldn't end the conversation already! That would be rude! Besides, she wanted to be more social and friendly to her fellow students.

"Places, then!" She piped up again. "Where are you off to, if you don't mind me asking?"

[zombnambulist]

Her non-gaze turned away. Why ask, she wondered. Why did it need an answer, what would a goal accomplish? The small-minded needed such strictly defined rules, an accomplishment and a failure. She had no goals, she couldn't fail.

"Where is there to be?"