NICO LEHMANN

Holy shit, that was a lot of noise. From the harsh sounds that stabbed his senses to a smoother pulse of volume, Nico's ears throbbed trying to make sense of the noises. Eventually, his brain reconnected some crucial line between sounds and meaning and he caught the last part of a conversation.

"If you want to leave, better get some rest and food for the journey."

Who was leaving? Who was talking? Why did he feel like he had heard this voice before?

He struggled to say something in response, but felt the world lurch too damn quickly when whoever was holding him decided he could stand on his own. He couldn't, and made some weird noise between a whine and a shout to emphasize this. His protests stopped when the stabilizing sensation of balance and warmth from the body next to him calmed him down.

Nico blinked blearily, leaning heavily against the person next to him as they walked, his free hand groping uselessly against his eyes for the glasses he already knew weren't on his face.

"S-sorry," he finally mumbled, amazed that talking could be so difficult.

The person said something further and it took Nico a while to realize she had asked about his condition.

She.

Voice was female.

Really familiar.

Then it hit him where he had heard her voice before: panther girl.

Wait, she speaks English?!

His mental dialogue was returning, too, signaling that he was at least coherent enough to think normally again.

"You speak English?" he murmured what he was thinking, mental filter still not quite up to par.

@Riffus Maximus

Mikhail Suburov-Tachibana

A flicker of anger in Mikhail's eyes, a flicker which was dispelled by Akasha's smile. He held on to that light projected by said smile, using it to lift himself up out of the darkness and poison his heart had plunged into, at least for a while. Replying with a smile of his own, the boy, recovering hope, said to Akasha:

"My lady, I'll follow your lead, then. I'll be staying with Nico if he wants to stay here as well." There was still a dash of disappointment that Clive and the other participants of the operation to punch Varus had abandoned them, but what was important...was that the Amazon girl hadn't followed their example. "Let's train together, let's be friends together, and let's be stronger together."

A lifeline, he had been thrown a lifeline. Mikhail can almost cry at the kindness shown him, even after he had betrayed the depths of his hate for others, hate that had been concealed behind the desire to bring peace between Magi and Nonmagi. My lady. He would latch onto this Amazonian beauty as well as Nico, in exchange for the generosity he had been shown. Turning towards Nico, Mikhail would say:

"The higher-ups did something to make sure that there's no more language barrier; basically made it so we can all understand each other. Anyway, do you know the name of our new friend, then?" Mikhail felt wonder return to his voice, and hate for those not himself, Nico, and Akasha fade.

@January@Scio@Riffus Maximus

NICO LEHMANN

Mikhail's voice drifted towards him from a different direction and Nico was almost glad he was too tired to look. He didn't have the strength to separate his thoughts from his mouth at the moment, and Mikhail was the last person he wanted to hear his thoughts. He had mentioned some generalities about that particular disconnect in their letters to each other, throwing out brief examples of the occasional wish for someone to get hit by a car and such, but Nico doubted Mikhail had any idea what Nico thought of him. Especially after what Lucien had said about Mikhail.

Nico knew it was unfair, letting Lucien judge Mikhail for him, but he trusted his younger brother--completely. And Elliot's motivations for selecting Mikhail to be his contact hadn't stemmed from a desire to cultivate any kind of true friendship there. His brothers had their own ways of keeping him safe, and as much as he chafed against yet another thing they could do better than him (this one being particularly thorny for him since it amounted to "taking care of him better than he could take care of himself") Nico never protested. He couldn't delude himself about his brothers. They had taken care of him his entire life.

Mikhail is a--

Green.

Kelly green. Fern. Shamrock. Viridian. Mint. Emerald. Jade. Dark olive.

He harshly cut off his own thoughts with a single-minded focus on the blur of green shades below his feet. Picking out the colors gave him something to focus on, something to keep his mind from wandering towards less pleasant thoughts.

When the unpleasant tide of emotions loosed by Mikhail's voice had subsided, Nico focused on what his penpal had said.

Of course. Magic school. Some kind of auto-translate magic. He could have kicked himself for not thinking of that first.

And then Mikhail asked for the name of the girl Nico was leaning on and he realized he didn't know. Hadn't thought to ask.

That thought somehow reminded him that he didn't have his bag. Or his jacket. And definitely not his glasses.

"Where the hell is my stuff?" he blurted out quietly, still not enough spare breath yet to speak at a normal volume. "Shit. I mean--what's your name?" he turned as much as he could towards the person he was leaning on, the close proximity allowing him to discern enough details to realize he was leaning directly against the girl's bare, tan skin.

Tawny. Sandy. Beige. Bronze. Almost copper in the right lighting. Would be umber in the shadows.

It was all he could do to keep his instinctive tendency to back away at bay. The slow recovery from his knockout had dampened much of his usual social reflexes, but as they returned, he found a slow blush rising at the realization that he was using a mostly under-dressed girl as a glorified walking stick.

@Riffus Maximus@Letter Bee

The sun stood atop the sky when Layla and her faithful canine companion arrived at Four Winds. The pair had, over the course of about seven hours and a long series of minor setbacks that didn't deserve mention, managed to finally make it up Mount Fuji. Layla gave a little prayer of gratitude for the remarkably well-stocked waystations along the trail.

It really was an odd place for a school, though- how did they even expect people to make it up here for a morning orientation? Did they want kids to start walking at 2 AM, or something? Plus it was really cold, and the wind was downright vicious when you got this high up.

"Well, Pochi, it was a long and lonely road, but we finally made it. Plus we found this cool rock that looks like a skull!"

_{"Urameshiya~"}

"Eh, you say something? Well, anyway, here we are at Four- Golly."

The first thing Layla noticed that the academy grounds were some kind of temperate forest region filled with greenery that definitely had no way of surviving at this altitude. Layla might have questioned the environmental impact of this, were she the sort of person that cared about that kind of thing. Lucky of her, she wasn't.

The second thing Layla noticed was that most of the front lawn was varying levels of blasted apart, on fire, or occupied by unconscious students. There were some groggy ones milling about, too, mumbling about breakfast. Really, it'd be more like brunch at this time of day, but who was counting.

"Hey!", she shouted to everyone in general as she dismounted, "You guys, over there! What'd I miss? Whole damn place looks like a bomb went off!"

Rhian's fearful gaze slowly dulled into a glazed over look of boredom. How long were these owls going to keep this up? She heard Rose basically confirm Rhian's earlier deduction-- these kids wanted a place where they fit in. A place to start over.... The nausea Rhian had hoped to leave back at the airport in Aberdeen suddenly hit her again. She privately kicked herself for not bringing a water bottle. Fuck. She needed a cigarette, but now wasn't a good time.

This is so fucking stupid, she mused, looking past the birds at clear blue sky. It was humid as hell and she'd been standing in one place for too long. The number of insects approaching her boots was starting to make her uncomfortable, though she wouldn't dream of letting her face betray this fact.

"This is so fucking stupid," she muttered, just loud enough to be heard. She'd racked her brain for a good reason to use her filter, but just couldn't seem to find one. "Yeah. Let's go, whatever-your-name-is," she replied, looking at Rose. No way in hell she was following some guy that'd been lost in the woods for days. She waited for Rose to take the lead.

DONOVAN HORSKA

Donovan nodded to the last guy in their little group. When he asked for introductions, Donovan heard the unmistakable hint of an Australian accent. It was nice to find something familiar in this outrageous place.

“Donovan,” he stated bluntly, “You Aussie too?”

Another voice chimed through from somewhere behind them. Donovan turned to see a dog further back. One of those Japanese breeds that Donovan could never really pin down by name. But he supposed that its breed was greatly overshadowed by the fact that it just talked. Was that supposed to be surprising? Guess he should have seen this coming. This was magic school, after all.

“Sentient animals now,” he muttered and ignored the new arrival out of fatigue and resignation, “Fucking cliché.”

@Mercurial @GreenGoat @RoflsMazoy @Menhir

"Wasn't just the dog," Clive said. "Someone's on top of it, right there..."

Maybe it'd be hard to spot for the others but the new arrival had a large magic aura-trace kind of thing around her. He was assuming she wasn't able to turn hers off, like Clive's and Junko's abilities as well. He wasn't quite sure whether her magic was the thing that had changed her size, or if it was only the disproportionately loud voice of hers. It was sort of a possibility that she was just that short and her magic did something else, but it was unlikely.

"If you want the abridged version, then sure, you could say a bomb went off." He said to the tiny girl. He was going to put the magic question at the back of his mind for now. "We're all fine though. We're heading in for breakfast right about now."

@Menhir@banjoanjo@Mercurial@GreenGoat

"Whoa, whoa, whoa, not so fast. You can't just walk out on all this-", Layla spread her arms to indicate the general area, "-just 'cuz you're hungry. Didn't your parents ever tell you to clean up your own mess?"

Layla vaulted off her mount and landed near the sunglasses boy, Clive. She grabbed the cuff of his pant leg and pulled backwards, attempting to drag him along. Being

"Come on, up and at 'em!"

She pointed at the hazy shapes of the other students through the mist- one of them seemed to be carrying a person. Maybe she was actually responsible? Good to know there was at least one person with a good head on their shoulders.

"-And the rest of you, too! What would the teacher say if he something like saw this?"

Clive fell forwards and immediately his hand shot out to stabilize his sunglasses. His self-preservation started with those, after all.

"-And the rest of you, too! What would the teacher say if he something like saw this?"

"Well, I mean, that's him right over there," Clive said pointing toward Varus. "He doesn't really seem to care either."

The girl had surprising strength for her size, probably also due to her magic. Two confirmed effects, and the third one in question probably didn't matter in the end. She was also a surprisingly charitable person? Well, it was probably the normal thing to do in this kind of a situation, maybe it was just Clive that was weird. He didn't really know. He was pretty sure the guys on the ground were all fine, anyway.

"Not to mention the teacher's the one who caused the explosion in the first place."

---

@Menhir @GreenGoat @banjoanjo @Mercurial

DONOVAN HORSKA

Tiny humans were no better than sentient, talking animals in terms of fairytale tropes. It didn't help that this little chick seemed to be the loud, self-righteous type. A real go-getter as some people might say. Donovan was just glad that she was hassling Clive instead of him. He didn't need someone imposing their goody-two-shoe morals on him right after an embarrassing loss. And fuck, why was this chick's voice so bloody loud? Shouldn't there've been some sort of inverse-square law for sound and mass? Whatever, it wasn't like he ever gave a shit about Physics.

"'t's not our bloody problem," he drawled carelessly, "And Clive's right. That's our teacher over there. Heading to breakfast without so much as a speck of fucking dust on his nice jacket. Zero fucks given. He said something like-"

Donovan swept his hair back and changed his gait to match Varus'.

"Good job, the lot of you. Nice hustle." Donovan repeated mockingly, doing an impressive rendition of Varus' gruff voice.

@Menhir @RoflsMazoy @Mercurial @GreenGoat

Hearing out what Mikhail was saying, Akasha was pleased to hear he had given up on leaving, and instead offered to be a training partner, a friend even. It would seem that her rather primal way of philosophy had reached him, and his seething anger was replaced by something a bit more hopeful.

“Sure. We friends now. I’m very happy you say so.” Akasha replied with her trademark cheerful smile.

Still holding onto Nico to support him, it would have seemed the poor guy suffered quite the trauma. Initially, he didn’t seem like he was able to understand what either his friend or Akasha was saying. Until he suddenly blurted out something about speaking English.

What was English? Some sort of language, a dialect, something everyone could understand? Whatever that was, Nico’s friend quickly explained to him that something happened earlier made everyone understand each other without knowing a common language. Was that caused by the principal’ magic smoke they had all inhaled earlier? If so, then smoking stuff really had magical properties, at least from Akasha’s point of view.

When Nico first asked for his stuff back, Akasha looked around, but she couldn’t see what stuff he meant, until he instead redirected his question to a more personal level. He had asked about her name.

True enough, of all the people she had bumped into today, she didn’t know anyone’s name, nor has anyone asked about her name either. It made her realize just how stupidly straight-forward she was, a real savage girl some would even call her. True enough, amazons don’t really grow up by learning social etiquette. In fact, most names are learned after a sparring session, or learned by others.

“I’m Akasha!” the young amazon nearly shouted in glee, excited to have someone taking the initiative to know a bit more about her.

Someone new had arrived on the scene, and demanded something about cleaning the mess around here. In the midst of this new arrival, some of the others students were rambling among themselves about the problem being caused by the one that had tested them, and some didn’t care about it.

“They’re right. Training chief over there. He makes big explosions. He’s the one making mess and knocking people down.” Akasha answered by pointing at the fading figure of their instructor leaving the training ground.

“Still, got to help those who can’t stand for themselves, right?” she added with a smile,

Looking between Gale and Rhian, she pursed her lips, letting out a light sigh. "It's Rosaleen.. or Rose.." Despite her mild annoyance at her name being forgotten, she also recognized how annoying this must've been for Rhian, not to mention she was the type of personality that was more inclined to follow orders than give them. So as she waved her hand in the direction of the school, she silently agreed to lead Rhian further along - and anyone else really.

She glanced back to the pink owls who had been gliding in circles for a couple minutes now. They didn't seem harmful anymore, if a bit odd and out of place. However Rose figured that she might as well assume that this sort of thing was to become more regular as they were welcomed into the school. In truth, she wasn't sure what to expect besides other students trying to learn and control their own powers. A thought then crossed her mind, 'are there others like me?' It wasn't so much of, are there other magic users, but others that had a hard time making their own magics 'safe.' Or other energy users mayhaps. It was a nice curiosity to indulge in as she hiked up the mountain.

"Rose, huh?" Gale mused to himself.
If he thought about it, it was pretty fitting. After all, if he saw a baby with pink hair, he'd probably want to call it Rose. Or something like that, anyway. Gale wondered if her hair was natural or if it was dyed.
If it is natural, Gale mused.
"I wonder what your parents look like."

When Gale realised he'd said it out loud, he coughed awkwardly and quickly apologized.
"Sorry, that was kind of rude." He said.
Speaking of rude, I haven't even told her my name.
Had his social "skills" worn down so far as to be so caddish to people he had just met? As he paused to reflect, he realised that the answer was yes. Or at least sort of. He'd never had much opportunity to talk to people in his old school when they'd always avoided him, and he'd been in a foreign country for the past month or so desperately figuring out how to get where he wanted. So yes, his already stunted social skill was paired down even further by his journey, but at least he wasn't tactless. Or, at least he thought he wasn't tactless.

"Well, nevermind." Gale said, coughing again.
The best way to talk to someone was to talk to them, after all. He didn't really need social skills that much, did he? Gale turned to face Rose directly and produced a natural smile while he gave his greetings.
"My name's Gale. Nice to meet you, Rose." Gale said. "And what about you two? If we're gonna go together, we may as well introduce ourselves, right?"

---

@Baklava@lydyn, and @Zero Hex though if you just wanna wait for scio then don't do anything I guess

Rhian shoved her hands in her pockets and kicked some of the bugs at her feet to make herself look preoccupied. She'd remembered Rose's name, of course, but she wasn't about to let her know that. The sooner she got to the school, the sooner she could get to her room and away from all this insanity. Well... as away from it as she could be. There was still the matter of all these nasty fucking bugs that wouldn't leave her alone-- any of which could suddenly become nightmare fuel if she thought about them too much. In spite of her frustration, she was relieved that at least one among them had an idea of which direction to go. She moved to follow Rose's lead.

The social ineptitude of Gale's introduction wasn't lost on Rhian. Dismissing him and his weirdness with a simple musing about what a freak he was would have been ideal. As she was very quickly growing accustom to, however, life had other plans. When he asked for her name, she raised her eyebrows and gave him a forlorn look of impatience before an aggravated sigh escaped her lips. The pure meanness of what she said next surprised even her. She couldn't look him in the eye when she said it.

"Can we skip the introductions and just get to the school already? I don't want to be stuck out here with you freaks after dark," with the worst of her words now having been said, she turned to face him, "If you absolutely HAVE to know, my name's Rhian."

"Ease up, miss snippy, I'm not gonna kill you or anything." Gale said.
So, her name was Rhian. Ryan, perhaps? He wondered how to spell her name, but he didn't really want to ask since she didn't seem like she was particularly welcoming of his presence here. Best not to be too friendly until he could get away with it.
Rose and Rhian, hm? Gale mused.
He briefly wondered if the tree guy's name also started with R. Like Raymond or something.

Gale agreed that they should get a move on, it'd been a while since he'd been in a real bed. Really, even a comfy chair would be fine. A carpeted floor would do, at least. He was looking forward to Four Winds so much that he didn't really mind Rhian's attitude. He'd seen worse before, it didn't bother him anyway. And she probably didn't want to be here; she probably had some friends she misses from where she came from, wherever that was. Her exasperation with Gale was understandable, in the end, so he didn't let it bother him.

It was probably high time they continued moving. Gale yawned and stretched his arms behind his head. He was a little stiff from sleeping outside and he wanted to get to the academy ASAP.
"If you say you wanna go, then we gotta go." Gale said idly. "Lead on, Rose, you probably don't want to be following someone like me."

@lydyn@Baklava(@Zero Hex Just cause you're here)