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A gentle little lass with a heart of gold and a thumb of green.
A virtuoso who fancies herself the sinful temptation of audiences everywhere.
A scientist who could take on the world with the contents of a single test tube, if she dared.
A girl who walks a dangerous, if flashy, line between chaos and control.
A taciturn swordsman who prefers to do his talking through a foil.
A graceful snowflake on the ice, formidable as a blizzard to anything in her way.
A burglar whose stealth and sleight of hand are exceeded only by his greed.
A daredevil who flies close to the sun and never looks down.
A shooting star who exists only as an image on a screen, a carefully tailored avatar.
An artist whose lofty wordly ideals are splattered on bridges and subway walls.
A dramatist with an eye for detail and an intolerance for error.
A carpenter who built the bed in which he'd rather spend his day.
A disciplined leader whose life achievements decorate the sash on her shoulder.
A pugilist who knows his own strength, but knows his own weakness even better.
A multilinguist who prefers to hold her universally-understood tongue.
A boy who knew his way around robots so well, he began to become one.
A coxswain who knows that, eventually, he always has to come back ashore.
A soothsayer who can see every ghost and every loose end, except the ones in her head.
An intrepid reporter with his ear to the ground and his nose where it's not wanted.
And a red-ribbon achiever who got very lucky in the unluckiest way possible.
Twenty young men and women, all known for being the best at what they are, all hand-picked carefully from among all the high school students in the country. All of them found an envelope in their mail stamped closed with the wax imprint of a winged, crowned shield that well known to be the official school seal of Hope's Peak Academy.
The letters were full to bursting with praise for the incoming potential students, waxing poetic about how the graduates of the academy represented hope for the future, the great things the students can go on to accomplish, the merits of school's curriculum, the great fortune of the letters' receivers to have been selected to receive such a high honor.
A lot of big talk, really. But who could blame them, really? Nobody would have expected that these letters contained nothing but empty promises.
Well, no, not nobody. After all, the disaster to come was already being put into work within the turning gears of inventive minds, so those minds knew. They knew, and they were preparing to give these twenty students an academic experience that no one had ever so much as conceived before.
But I digress.
Each of the twenty recipients of these letters responded, and each eagerly accepted the invitation. Naturally. Who would ever be so foolish as to turn down the opportunity to guarantee for themselves a bright and prosperous future?
Preparations were made. Even long before the beginning of the new school year, the twenty students became household names among the many teens who followed the Hope's Peak forums religiously, discussing the new recruits, picking their favorites, wondering and theorizing about who these people are and what they're going to become. And on the day indicated in the acceptance letters, the students gathered from all corners of the country to join in the welcoming ceremony and orientation at the school that they knew would be a significant step toward a lifetime of success.
They all had the opportunity to stand before the breathtaking edifice, prominent against the city's skyling, that was the main building of the Hope's Peak Academy campus, some of them seeing the place for the first time in their lives. There was undeniably a certain majesty to the building, although it is hard to say for certain whether this came from the architectural feat itself, or simply from the knowledge of what went on inside.
The new students were told to gather in the entrance hall at eight in the morning, and none risked being late. Each student, after granting the face of the building the awe it was due, approached the entrance of the building, climbing the little stone steps leading toward the front doors.
Looking back, it's too bad they didn't take the time to soak those last few steps in. Climbing those stairs was the last moment in each of those twenty lives when things were normal, when things were going according to plan. When the world was all in order and no one needed to fear anything worse than poor marks on a test.
Oh well. What was that saying about spilled milk?
The final step from the outside world and into the school was the one that took them over the threshold of the entryway and into the grand foyer serving as the entrance hall. None of the twenty students got to experience that step in full. They each lifted their foot, passed through the doorway, and then –
Darkness.
Nothing.
…
…
…
…
…
Inside the walls of the school and outside, throughout the neighborhood for nearly a mile all around, the brass school bell's chimes could be heard.
Bong!
Bong!
Bong!
Bong!
Bong!
Bong!
Bong!
Bong!
Then, silence.