[IC] Our Game [Searching for 01 new player]

Summary

# 01: The Game Begins
# 02: The Truth Revealed

---

Notes & Instructions:

• Post #001:All characters wake up with all of the possessions they had on them as well as in the same state they were when they passed out, sans any possible injuries.
• Regardless of their languages spoken, they'll be able to understand both one another and the Game Master. However, devices that answer to voice commands (such as smartphones) won't recognize their speech for some mysterious reason.
• Post #002: Anyone who follows the Game Master's instructions will find out about their characters new psychic abilities as they manifest spontaneously.
• Post #003: N/A.

[Kuroyomihime]

It came from beyond, like a great shooting star crisscrossing the skies of our world. One day, it landed on our small planet, being dismissed as a mere thunder by those who have seen it. It observed the world of humans from above —a mouth as thin a line twisted in a perpetual grin— for a long, long time until it finally decided that it was time.

And so, with a simple gesture, seven children were bestowed with immense gifts and an equally crushing responsibility.

With the fate of the world hanging on such frail arms: let the game begin.

The Garden of Eden

_{Day 01; Morning}

The old school building was dark, lit only by the last rays of a blood-red dawn. A group of seven children, who may as well never seen each other in life before, would find themselves waking up, all sat in old, barely functioning seats. Their heads heavy and minds groggy, almost as if they woke up from a feverish coma. Only that, what awaited them was a reality far sinister than any dream could ever be.

“Welcome, to Eden, all of you,” said a high-pitched voice, almost as if it came from a plush toy. “Why are you still sleeping? It took me so long to set up this game; come on, wake up!” it added in a cheery tone that lacked any manner of humanity.

If the any of the children turned their faces to the teacher’s desk, they would see that who —or better, what— talked to them in fact, looked just like a black plush cat, wearing a miniature mage’s robe and a brimmed hat. It gazed at the children with unblinking, beady yellow eyes and a permanent smile endowed its overwhelmingly cute face.

“Hey, hey, if you don’t wake up soon, you’ll lose it! The game has already begun,” it said in the same cheery voice, pacing to and fro on the tabletop, “If you want to play without knowing the rules, it’s your own choice. But, I can’t be held responsible for what happens to your world, if that’s the case!”

---

[Natsu]

Aki's body shifted in her seat, causing a loud creak to permeate the room, as she slowly came to, to hear a voice talking to her, about some kind of game. "Did we win?" She wondered absently, as she forced her eyes open. What happened? She didn't think she got hit that hard... She looked up, to find herself in a decrepit classroom. A confused look fell upon her face. "Where... am I?" She asked, rubbing the back of her head. Aki frowned, not really having any idea as yo what was happening. That was until she saw the most adorable creature she'd ever laid eyes on.

She immediately rose from her seat, and made her way in front of the plush cat thing, not even noticing the others in the room, "What are you?" She asked, kneeling down to eye level, and booping the creature on the nose. "You're like... The Cat in the Hat." She gave a small chuckle, momentarily forgetting about the fear she should be feeling about this situation. She turned her head, and petted the creature, looking around its body. This was strange indeed. She grabbed below the cats fore-paws, and lifted it up above her, and looking at it inquisitively, "Do you know how me got here, mister Cat in the Hat?" She asked, not yet having put together that this cat creature was the thing talking to her to begin with.

[AlternateMan]

Jonathan woke up with a jump, and a lot of creaking from the chair he was sitting on. The high pitched, foreign voice alerted his senses, urging him to wake up. Realizing that he was sitting on an ancient chair, Jonathan scanned his surroundings. Through his groggy mind, Jonathan processed an old, plant covered classroom with six other kids... and a stuffed animal?
"What in the world is going o-"
Jonathan tried to stand up, but his legs had a different opinion. They wanted to rest a bit more, and decided not to support Jonathan's legs for a moment. He fell down to the floor, taking the chair down with him. With a frustrated grunt, he slowly pulled himself up.
"Owww..."

[KoL]

MINATO

"Ugh... it feels like I have been thrown into a washing and forgotten there for the whole night," this was the first thought to cross Minato's mind after she got trying to understand all that happened. Her expression was serious, as she thought things through. The first conclusion she came to was that she —maybe all of them— had been kidnapped and were being held hostage for god knows what reason. Panicking in this situation wouldn't help at all. In fact, it would likely make things worse.

Minato reached for her phone, which she still could feel in her pocket, but soon noticed that it had no reception at all. "Great, what am I going to do now?" she cursed inwardly before addressing the elephant in the room, "Who are you and what are you going to do with us? I'll tell you already that my parents can't pay any ransom. Unless you are a total psycho who gets your kicks from this kind of thing, you've lost your time when you kidnapped me." Minato didn't expect this one to work, even if it was true. Someone who went out of their way to organize this kind of spectacle certainly isn't looking to make easy money from ransom. What they stood to gain was the real mystery.

---

[Joker892]

"For gods sake will you all shut up!" Carson groaned in annoyance as he awoke with a beating headache. His limbs were still sore from yesterday, but he forced himself up onto his feet while rubbing the temple of his head in hopes that it would ease its awful pounding. "This has to be the worst hangover ever," he mumbled to himself as he cracked his neck with a grunt before looking at his surrounding. He quickly picked up that he was in a class room and saw six other strangers, three were awake while the other three were still out. He ignored them and turned his attention to their possible kidnapper, the strange cat in the hat. He rolled his eyes and sighed before walking up to the desk and shoving the girl out of the way. He glared down towards the cat in a few moments of silence before clearing his dry throat to speak.

"Alright pussy cat, I'm in no mood for this shit. Tell me what's going on here before I neuter your ass and kick you out those windows," he growled as he cracked his knuckles. Whatever game this thing was talking about Carson knew he wanted nothing to do with it. He just wanted to get home and see off his sister before she went to school. Also he wanted to get rid of this horrible headache.

[DawningAurora]

“ugh, my head” Hikaru groaned waking up from what seems like a coma. He looked around the room finding two kids still sleep and the other kids standing around a strange black cat that is wearing a hat and a mage's robe. His head was pounding, and everything felt numb. The last thing that he remembers was grabbing a book for history class and then nothing.

Did I have another episode? Hikaru thought. He couldn’t have if he did then he would still be in the library unless someone moved him, his eye immediately landed on the cat. He walked over to the little crowd surrounded the strange black cat sitting on the teacher desk

“I wouldn’t suggest you doing that” Hikaru said to the guy with the red hair after hearing his last comment, “that cat is our only scores of information, so I suggest keeping it for the moment, and after we get what we needed then you can do whatever you want with it”.

@Joker892

[Mangrale]

At Carson's disgruntled call for the others to shut up, Ed couldn't help but to perk up in his seat, a spur to move after the stuffed cat initially roused him from his slumber, which was less than sound as evident from his infrequent spasms prior. His lethargic hand lifted up to his head, in recognition of the sharp headache that would plague him for just a few more minutes. Yet with what faculty he mustered, the boy was forced into realizing his new surroundings, the implication of a possible kidnapping, no, multiple kidnapping, sending a jolt to his legs, that saw him almost jump out of his uneven and rickety chair, only to fail to keep him off the likely just as dingy floor. Toppling onto his front, Edmond's voice let out in a weak cry at the sudden grounding, but slowly made his way back up, even if unsteadily so. From, where he was situated, he could not make out the talking plush toy from behind the others grouped around it and therefore didn't pay them mind for the moment, instead turning to face his chair, taking a somewhat relieved step back to it and lightly kicking it aside to reveal his backpack underneath.

But even with the pack where it belonged, Edmond wasn't quite in the right frame of mind to begin to imagine what was going on. This whole situation was strange, no question. But it felt less like a "normal" kidnapping by the minute. Not only has he not been bounded to his seat, but he was allowed access to his stuff. Regardless of what was happening however, he wanted no part of it and therefore turned to the walls opposite of the teacher's desk in an attempt to spot any possible exits. Yet the room was indeed very dark save for the immediate area by the windows, a profound darkness that took advantage of his immediate trepidation enough to prompt a different course of action for the time being. Yet he did muster up enough courage to approach the desk, a relatively good amount of courage since there were two older boys that both had a around a foot over him. Ed was ready to demand answers, an explanation, and if there was opportunity, to plead for leniency on his own behalf. But at the sight of the oddly dressed plush cat, he would stop in his tracks. "Eh... what is this? A toy... and... he is alive? I do not understand," the boy uttered in disbelief, pointing at it and looking at the others to make sure they were seeing what he was.

[Natsu]

Aki was stunned for a moment as she was pushed away, very easily falling to the floor. "That wasn't very nice..." She said, now visibly shaken as she rose back to her feet. She didn't look like she was going to cry or anything, but clearly this was not somebody who was used to being physically assaulted. Her parents never even spanked her growing up, instead favoring to talk to her and work out problems, so this was basically the first time anybody bigger than her tried to push her around. She looked up at the man, and said with a smaller, but still very audible voice,"P-please calm down! There's no need to hurt it." From everybody else's reactions at this point, she had put two and two together, and realized that the cat was the one addressing them in the beginning. "It said it had a game for us to play, it could be fun! You don't need to be so mean." She said, her mouth contorting into a small pout.

[Kuroyomihime]

The Garden of Eden

_{Day 01; Morning}

“Ow ow ow, what do you think you are doing? I’m not a toy, you know?” The black-furred plush-looking being said hastily as Aki grabbed and began to treat it as a mere toy. It would soon become evident that none of these children had any measure of respect, or an idea of what situation they were in, just like when one of them threatened their alien-like host with extreme violence.

“Why don’t you do that? It’s not like I can do anything to force you not to hurt me. But…” For a moment, a large, tooth-filled grin that wouldn’t be out of home in a shark’s jaws flashed in the small being’s otherwise nigh featureless face. A large, malicious grin directed right at Carson as he shook it. “I’ll not be at fault if that sister you like so much dies along with the rest of your world because you decided to kill me before I explained the rules of the game. Hehehe,” it added in a voice full of ill-intent and sadism, before going back to its normal cheery disposition as if nothing at all happened.

“I’ll tell you that I have not kidnapped any of you. You have been chosen, among all the members of your world’s dominant species, to be their champions,” it addressed all of the other children worries about them being kidnapped. “If you want a proof that I’m saying the truth, why don’t you try to concentrate very hard and see what happens? After you are convinced, I’ll explain the rest of the rules to you.”

---

[AlternateMan]

Jonathan stood in the corner of the classroom, watching everyone wake up and start moving around. He scratched his chin as he listened to them. ‘Hmmm, so basically we were all randomly brought here...’ he thought, collecting details from their words. ‘And whatever that... plushie... thing... is, probably brought us here, if it isn’t lying.’ And obviously it was calling this a game, whatever it involved.
“Hey, don’t-“
Jonathan tried to stop when a boy walked up to the plushie and shook it violently, but stopped as he realized that he was too late for it. He froze in spot when the being’s grin filled it’s face, sensing something evil in it. He reluctantly nodded at the being’s explanation that came soon after its threatening.

[Mangrale]

Edmond could scarcely believe his eyes as he beheld their interactions with the entity, notably Carson's hostility towards it, which invoked a rather unsettling response in return. Whatever threatened and unnerved sensation came over the boy, was nevertheless secondary to just how utterly ludicrous this all seemed to him, so ludicrous in fact, that whether or not he was kidnapped was becoming less of a concern of his. This might have been for the best, as he wasn't inclined to trust the possessed plush toy. Even the thought of him, let alone the several of them, being chosen out of all mankind for some kind of game was downright absurd. "This... none of this can be real... am I still asleep?" Ed spoke in quiet incredulity. Backing away from the teacher's desk, he began to seriously consider that he was dreaming, figuring he must have fallen asleep while on the bus. Easy as it was to assume that was what happened, his memory was actually fairly cloudy.

Scrutinizing the room around him, the boy would approach one of the chairs, lowering to his knees to run his hand along it. If he was honest, the tangibly hard surface of the seat was less than encouraging, not to mention he could swear to picking up some dust here and there. Unfortunately, the mounting evidence to the contrary didn't extinguish his poorly considered theory before he decided that maybe he could simply will himself awake. Placing his backpack at his side, Edmond sat down and closed his eyes to concentrate, hands over his knees. After what felt to him like a minute, his eyes would open to reveal a faint glow about them. "Wha-What is happening? A-Am I waking up?..." he uttered aloud before the light around him distorted and enveloped him in a flat wave until he looked to completely disappear. No matter which angle one would look, all they would see is the chair and his backpack next to it.

[KoL]

MINATO

“Hey, calm down, will ya?” Minato said as she got up from her seat and placed a hand on Carson’s shoulder from behind. “Whatever that thing is, no matter if it’s saying the truth or not, we aren’t going to achieve anything with threats. I don’t like this situation as much as anyone here but you are going to get us in hot water if you don’t stop.” She didn’t even see the sinister grin on the toy-like being’s face, but she didn’t need to understand that this wasn’t normal.

A voice from behind her called her attention with its constant mumbling about them being in a dream. However, when Minato turned back, she didn’t see anyone. “Great I’m hallucinating, now. Just what I needed…” she spoke in a sarcastic voice, before turning her attention back to their mysterious host.

“Alright, Mister Cat, supposing that we believe in what you’re saying. Can you go ahead and explain this game thing to us? Also, why did we, out of everyone in the whole world get chosen for it? This seems a little too convenient, to say the least,” Minato asked in a way that made it more or less clear that she wasn’t truly convinced. However, if they didn’t get done with this, they would never go anywhere.

---

[Joker892]

Carson's world froze as the little cat bastard mentioned his sister and he only stared wide eyed at the creature. A feeling of dread filled his heart as the creatures ungodly smile widened, showing him an evil that shouldn't be. His body began to tremble slightly as he took a step away from the creature and images of his sister began to flash in his mind. Her smile of joy, her happy laughter and her kind nature played over and over within Carson's head. Soon a blue haired girl rested her hand on his shoulder and listen as she spoke. His fear and anger towards the cat grew every second, but he knew she was right, he had to be calm. He nodded and took a deep breath as he looked back to the cat. He glared at the monster with such hatred he felt as if his eyes would burn from his rage. "If she has a single scratch on her I will personally end you," he growled through gritted teeth.

[Natsu]

Aki fell back in terror as the cat creature took on a nightmarish face, leaving her apt not to pet the creature in the near future. She meekly nodded as the creature explained that they were all chosen for... something. She rubbed her head, confused, "What do you mean... none of this makes any sense..."She said, her voice smaller, and more full of fear as the strangeness and foreign nature of this new situation crept upon her psyche. She screwed up her eyes and held back tears, saying "I'm scared and I wanna go home...." She said, a tear leaking out from one of her eyes as she forced them open, her gaze happening to land on Hikaru as she said, "Somebody help me! Please!" her voice full of panic and fear now. She cradled herself in her arms, and looked down as she sunk back to the floor, labored breaths coming out of her mouth as she choked back tears. She didn't know where she was, what was happening, and the man in front of her seemed violent and ready to act. The was the most scared Aki ever felt, and there was nothing she could do about it.
@DawningAurora

[Kuroyomihime]

The Garden of Eden

_{Day 01; Morning}

"You don't have to fear, nothing will happen to your sister... as long as you beat the game," The small creature replied to Carson still enraged threats before turning its attention to Minato. "Now, that's a smart choice you made. You all lost quite a bit of time already if you want to have a chance, it's better than you sit down and listen to what I'll tell you instead of crying around in the corner," it added, likely talking about Edmond and Aki's sudden descent into despair.

"I'll be brief about this. The specifics are too complex for you to understand any, so there's no need to tell you about it," the creature said, taking a place in the center of the teacher's desk. It produced a magic-looking staff, seemingly out of thin air, and waved it through the air, projecting holographic images of the deep space, zooming from a cluster of unknown galaxies in until it reached a pale blue dot orbiting around an unassuming, solitary yellow star. "You can call me the Game Master. I'm the agent chosen by the Cosmic Principles to pass judgment on your world," it said nonchalantly, back to its fake cheerful voice.

"To put it in the simplest way possible, life is a very rare phenomenon. Self-aware, intelligent life is even rarer. Even so, the universe only has the resources to sustain a certain number of advanced civilizations. Ever since long before your world was formed in interstellar gas and dust, the Cosmic Principles have balanced the number of such civilizations that can exist at once through the universe. Whenever it passes a certain threshold, they issue a challenge to some of them chosen according to the Principles' will. Any civilization that passes the challenge is allowed to continue to grow, those that fail are obliterated in order to keep the balance."

"The challenge is a simple game, where promising members of that civilization's newer generations are given tools and told to defeat a number of enemies. Since this is your world's first challenge, you have to defeat seven groups of seven enemies before you can be declared victors. Until you do so, you can't leave this battle arena, the Gardens of Creation: Eden." After finishing his explanation, the Game Master looked around the room and asked cheerily, "Is there anything else you want to know?"

---

[AlternateMan]

Jonathan scratched his chin as he listened to the’Game Master’(as far as it wanted to be called that way) explained the situation. All this flood of information didn’t sound realistic, but since the creature was the only source of information here, they had no choice but to give it some credit. ‘But basically it’s just few grumpy old cosmic beings picking some teenagers to fight horrifying enemies to see if the entire species can continue. And this mostly has nothing to do with intelligence.’ Jonathan thought as he organized the details within his head. He slowly raised a hand.
“What are those tools you said that were given to us?”
He asked.

[KoL]

MINATO

Minato was unsure of what to think at this point. This whole situation was getting more unreal with every second that passed. Now they had to take in the concept of alien overlords putting the evolution of intelligent races in check and accept it as truth. In one hand that was one of the proposed solutions to the Fermi Paradox, which fascinates Minato as much as any other human beings enamored with space, on the other, it was something hard to swallow in such a casual way.

Either way, there were more important things to take into consideration now, like the question made by Jonathan. "Indeed, I second that question. If we have to fight, I'd like to know what are those tools you talked about as well as those enemies we are supposed to defeat. What are they and what do they look like?" Minato asked, taking a seat in a nearby chair. "Also, why is it that we are able to understand one another? The last time I checked I didn't know how to talk Alien, also some of the others don't look like they know Japanese either. Did you do something to our brains while we were unconscious?"

---

[Mangrale]

Edmond had since left his chair, not at all amused when it became apparent to him that he was still stuck where he was and not back at the bus. He was very much oblivious to the unintended manifestation to his power, his backpack more or less raising from the ground and seeming to levitate for a moment before the light slowly folded around it, camouflaging it as well. The boy winced a little at hearing the commotion at the front of the room, but he was too caught up with his dream theory to bother. For all he knew, everything including them and this entire world were just a figment of his unconscious mind. Pondering on this, the thick darkness around the edges of the room started to gradually hold less and less sway over him, and he steadily moved near the back corner; he believed it time to investigate this dimly lit room. By the time the plush guide called on everyone to return to the chairs and listen, Ed had already visably materialized and felt around the nook, even knocking the walls with hi ear against the surface in expectation of an audible or otherwise tangible irregularity. Needless to say, he took exception to the possessed plushie's choice of words. "Hmph! I was not crying..." he pouted quietly, pacing back to his seat, if only to get whatever it wanted over with. In short, if Ed didn't trust anyone who opens an explanation with refusal to delve into specifics on the grounds of doubt that he'd understand, he'd most certainly mistrust such individuals from now onward. From his folded arms and furrowed brow in the toy's direction, his wary skepticism couldn't be mistaken.