Anna Watanabe, Ultimate Game Designer
Anna knew a game when she saw one. She didn't yet know what the rules were, or the win condition. Waking up in an unfamiliar place, however, with no clues, no instructions, and no guards, made it obvious to her that this must be some sort of game. A simple kidnapping for money or revenge would involve locked doors, guards, and instructions. Her captors would gain nothing, letting her wander freely about, where she could potentially discover all kinds of incriminating evidence.
Which meant that her being allowed to wander must have served a purpose to her kidnappers. Anna felt certain that she was supposed to explore, and there were plenty of places to do so.
Initially, she found fifteen locked doors that she suspected lead to rooms like her own. Another five doors, further down the hallway, opened into various generic rooms of the kind she'd expect from the sort of resort this seemed to be- a lounge, a dining area, a lobby, etc. Four locked doors in tantalizing places suggested outer doors and staircases to other parts of the building, and, completing her investigation as she returned to her starting room to consider her next move, Anna was surprised to discover that her window was unlocked. She supposed that was most likely due to the impenetrable storm apparently raging outside.
Her initial plan was to examine the four locked doors, which greatly intrigued her, but the unfortunate timing of the announcement made that impossible. If the game was any good, she would be able to learn far more about it by disobeying a rule than she would in obeying it. Since all of the locked doors were positioned in or directly next to the designated meeting place, they would have to wait.
The other open rooms would have to wait for the same reason- they were along the hall leading to the meeting area, where she could be easily spotted and towed in with all the rest. If her suspicions about the fifteen other doors were correct, that made them least promising of all, meaning the only logical choice was the window.
Anna was dressed well for the weather, in her bright green wool sweater and fleece tights underneath a long skirt. She'd experienced far worse every winter at home in Sweden, anyway, and so she didn't hesitate to slip through her window and out into the snow.
Fierce wind blew against her, stinging her eyes and making it hard to see, but she found the snow was only a foot deep. The blizzard, then, had started somewhat recently. She wondered if this place had been chosen for the blizzard, or if it was only a side effect of choosing what she had deduced was actually a ski lodge for the game.
Ignoring the storm, she pulled her notebook from her sweater pocket, and wrote that question down below her notes from her previous exploration. She found that when doing something important, it was best to write everything down, no matter how trivial or obvious. This was why she'd invested in a waterproof notebook, to ensure nothing could prevent note taking. Anna Watanabe wouldn't let such a simple mistake bring her down.
Notebook in hand, ready to record anything else of interest, she moved first to inspect the wall she'd only barely been able to see through the storm. It was, she guessed, around ten feet from her window, and at least fifteen feet tall. Made of flat stone bricks, there were no convenient gaps or lumps to make climbing possible. If she could find the supplies, she might be able to make a grappling hook to scale it, but she herself was not skilled enough at climbing to try it except as a last resort.
Glancing left and right, she thought she could see a corner to her right, so she followed the barrier wall to her left, one hand trailing along the surface so she would not get lost. She could still see the building to her left, but there was no use being careless during a blizzard.
When she reached the corner where the wing she'd woken up in connected to the main hallway, she had a choice to make. Continuing on, the distance between the lodge and the perimeter wall widened considerably.
Anna wasn't at all sure she'd be able to see the building through the storm if she continued, but she might learn some very useful information about the grounds if she went on. Shadows up ahead twisted in the wind, obscured by the storm, suggesting something that seemed worth checking out. Other than the wall, the dark shapes in the snow were the first sign of… well, anything that she'd seen outside of the building so far. Anna felt certain that it would be a mistake to turn back now.
After a moment's thought, she crossed over to the building to continue on, hand trailing along its outer wall to ensure she would be able to get back inside quickly if necessary. The mysterious shadows were much closer to the building than to the perimeter wall. Anna had barely turned the corner before she managed to identify what they were properly- a set of chairs around a fire pit. No one would want to sit in the chairs in this kind of storm, and the fire was not lit, but their existence implied there was definitely a door somewhere that would lead out to them. Whoever had put them here wouldn't have done so if they expected anyone to have to climb in and out of windows to use them.
Anna kept walking, looking for the door, but something grabbed her arm from behind. She whirled, careful to keep contact with the wall, and found herself face to face with… something very strange.
The thing gripping her arm was not a hand, but a tentacle, attached to a figure several feet away, difficult to see clearly through the storm. As far as she could tell, the figure was some kind of robotic humanoid, with eight tentacles sprouting in a ring around the shoulders roughly where a human being's arms should have been. Though it was hard to tell, the thing didn't have much of a face, only a pair of eyes on a blank panel, black on one side and white on the other. For a moment, Anna wondered wildly if she had dramatically misunderstood the nature of the game. A tentacled robot didn't lend itself to many scenarios and the only ones she could imagine were truly unpleasant.
"Miss Watanabe, you are in violation of school rules." The robot said in a flat voice that managed to sound angry despite its dry monotone.
"School? What school?" Anna asked, frowning. "I never enrolled here, how can I break school rules for a school I'm not enrolled in?"
The robot ignored her questions. "As this is your first offence and the first day of school I am not permitted to shoot you on sight, provided you cooperate and come with me immediately."
"... Shoot me?" Anna asked, half curios, half challenging. It was something of a risk, she knew, but if she could at least get the robot to prove whether or not it was actually armed, that would be valuable information.
She could not have predicted the horrifying response. The robot's head and shoulders folded backwards on a hinge along the spine, metal clanking against metal, revealing a huge maw lined with rows of rotating teeth around the interior of what had been its chest, shoulders and back. Anna didn't have to touch them to know they were razor sharp. Bits of metal and wire shifted and whirred around the monster's horrifying inner workings.
Four tentacles reached out and grabbed her, lifting her into the air, while four more shifted, the tips of each one opening up like flower petals to reveal worryingly large gun barrels. It pointed every last one of them at Anna.
"I do not tolerate rule breaking students." The robot told her, and she thought she could hear a note of delight in its voice. "Will you come with me, or will I have the supreme pleasure of making an example out of you?"
Anna swallowed. "I'll go with you." She agreed. There was nothing to be gained from her own death, after all. If her captors were willing to threaten her so dramatically, that alone was enough useful information for the time being.
"Very well, Miss Watanabe." Anna noticed, for the first time, that her horrifying robotic babysitter had a feminine voice. "Let us go find your fellow disobedient classmates." She put Anna back on the ground with a sigh, though did not entirely relinquish her grip on her arm.
Ryuushin Hiikari - Ultimate Artist
Ryuu wished they could say that they had stayed in their room deliberately, out of defiance or distrust, but the reality was much less impressive. Waking up in an unfamiliar room with no window and a locked door, Ryuu had panicked, stumbling over to sit in the chair in the corner of the room. They tried to slow their breathing down until it was possible to see properly again, although walking steadily still remained out of the question.
This would have probably worked very well, if not for the appearance of a bizarre, mechanical woman with features like an octopus.
"Mx. Hiikari, you are in violation of school rules." The octopus woman announced firmly.
"Wh-what?" They squeaked, barely able to raise their voice above a whisper, as the edges of their vision began fading to black yet again.
Ryuu noticed, then, that the octopus woman had apparently towed someone else into the room behind her. Crossing her arms over her chest was a very annoyed looking Japanese girl, covered in snow, with purple streaks in her hair similar to Ryuu's own bangs.
Ryuu's immediate impression was that they must've freaked out so hard they were hallucinating, but one of the robot's tentacles wrapped around their wrist, and the cold steel against their skin made it clear that all of this was very real.
"I… school rules?" Putting their head between their knees, the Ultimate Artist took a few shuddering breaths, trying to pull themselves together enough to deal with this new threat.
The actual human girl sighed. "The kid is obviously having a panic attack." She told the octopus.
Ryuu heard a strange whirring noise, like the zoom on a camera adjusting slightly. "Very well. Under the circumstances, no punishment will be inflicted. Mx Hiikari, can you walk, or do you need to be carried?"
This surprisingly mundane conversion between the robot and the woman helped ground Ryuu, and they managed to shake their head in reply. "I can walk. If you could give me... just a moment?"
Another clicking sound emerged from within the octopus, and Ryuu somehow felt sure that this was an indication of annoyance. "You have exactly one hundred and twenty seconds."
"Thank you." Ryuu replied weakly, taking a few more deep breaths.
"Who are you, anyway?" The Japanese woman blurted, pulling out a notebook and pen.
"I'm… Ryuu. Ryuushin Hiikari." A couple more deep breaths, and their vision was more or less back to normal.
"Hiikari, Hiikari...oh! As in the artist?" She inquired. "Aren't you the one that did the illustrations for my card game last year? Snow and Sand?"
Mention of their work, and the revelation that the two of them shared a connection to each other, helped to snap them out of their panic a bit more. "Yeah, that was me. That must make you… Watanabe, wasn't it?"
"Anna is fine." She smiled at them. "Didn't you get picked for Ultimate Artist not long after that? That would make us both Ultimates, which is interesting."
"I did." Ryuu sighed. "But if that's what got me here, I wish they'd picked someone else."
Anna frowned and turned to the robot. "Hey, are we here because we're Ultimates?"
Another annoyed click. "Your questions will all be answered by the Headmaster as soon as you have joined your fellow students in the lobby."
"What good even are you, other than threatening to murder children?" Anna spat back at her, scowling.
"I am the Librarian." The robot replied. "My job is to manage all supplies at the Academy and to discipline rule breakers."
"But there...is no library." Anna insisted skeptically. Ryuu didn't know why she was so persistent about needling the robot, but she seemed to know what she was doing, so they didn't stop her.
"It is upstairs. You are not allowed access until you have proven yourselves." The Librarian explained cryptically, then tugged Ryuu to their feet, holding them up uncomfortably by the shoulder until she was sure they were standing on their own. Now, if you are well enough to converse with your classmates, you are well enough to join the others. Right this way to the lobby."
Jacky Dietz- Ultimate Football/Soccer Player
Jacky wasn't late on purpose. He didn't really understand what was going on, but he was inclined to follow instructions unless they seemed obviously harmful, since cooperation was said to be safest for someone who had been kidnapped. And he was pretty sure this was a kidnapping.
So, he really didn't mean to be late getting to the lobby, but somewhere along the way there… he got lost. Jacky didn't have a particularly good sense of direction in the first place, but he didn't think he had a bad one, either. Something about the winding corridors with so many doors just got him hopelessly turned around.
And, although he would never have admitted to it, he wasn't entirely sure what room counted as a lobby. One of the largest rooms, with a set of comfortable couches and tables, seemed like it might have been a lobby. Nobody ever showed up, though, and it was empty when he got there.
Jacky tried the room across the hall from that one next, but found nothing except for two long tables and some very big windows. Through one of the windows, he did manage to catch a glimpse of a Japanese girl with purple streaks in her hair wandering around in the storm with a notebook for some reason.
Jacky was reasonably certain that the room with the washing machines and the storage room were not the lobby, but that only left him with the small rooms with the beds, or the room with weird circular benches all over the place. By the time he made his way back to the room with the benches, however… it seemed to be locked. Only the small rooms were left, and those couldn't possibly be a 'lobby'.
So, he sat down on a bench in the hallway, situated between the storage room and the locked room with the benches and frowned at the door. Maybe he was supposed to wait to be let in? That wouldn't be the weirdest thing in the world. There were plenty of times, plenty of places, where classrooms or locker rooms were locked until a teacher or coach showed up to open them. If he'd missed when the main group was let in, it might even explain why he couldn't find anyone.
Should he knock? Jacky stood up and moved to do so, but hesitated. If he really was late and no one had noticed, it might still be possible for him to sneak into the room and ask someone else what was going on later. If he was late and they did notice him coming in, he might be in trouble. Maybe, he figured, it would be better for him to find a place to lie low?
Considering where to hide, Jacky paced around the hall a few times, only to be interrupted by the strangest looking trio he'd ever seen coming around the corner.
To one side, he recognized the girl with the purple streaks in her hair from before. Somehow, there was still snow on her sweater, he noticed. On the opposite side was a kid Jacky had never seen before, with brown hair and purple bangs, wearing a black hoodie and jeans that did not seem sufficient for the weather. He wondered whether it meant anything that both of them had purple hair, but focusing on anything other than the figure between them both was impossible.
She… at least he thought it was a she? ... was tall, made even taller looking by the stern black dress hanging off her, all angles and lines with absolutely no curves to speak of. But 'wearing a dress' was where her resemblance to other humans began and ended. For one thing, she had tentacles instead of arms, each coming to a point that was segmented like the petals of a flower bud.
For another, she was clearly a robot, the main body of the tentacles made of what looked like some sort of wire mesh welded to a brass panel around her shoulder, while all of her visible 'skin' looked like it was made of glossy plastic. She didn't even have a face, just a pair of glowing red eyes set in the front of an egg-shaped dome where most people had normal heads. Split vertically down the middle, her blank 'face' was, for some reason, half black, half white.
Jacky was no biologist, but he was pretty sure there weren't any squid or octopi or anything that looked like that, and the coloration seemed like a really, really weird choice. She had a tentacle wrapped around each of her human companions' arms, and he stumbled back a bit to prevent one from grabbing him too.
"Uh… Hi?" He said, trying to play it casual.
"Mr. Dietz. You are in violation of school rules. You should be inside the lobby, not next to it." The robot explained coldly.
"Oh! Right, right, I knew that, it's just, I… sorry, the door was locked when I got here?"
One of the robot's tentacles extended nearly ten feet and twisted around Jacky so that it could reach the doorknob, giving it an experimental twist. "Ah, I see. The Receptionist must have locked it. Not to worry"
Jacky watched in fascination as the segments of the 'flower petal' which composed the tentacle opened up to reveal a key inside, seemingly a part of the robot itself. She unlocked the door, then retracted the key through weird internal machinery, closing it up so that she could use her hand to open the door.
"Inside, Mr. Dietz, Miss Watanabe, Mx Hiikari." The robot ordered firmly, shoving the two in her grasp toward the doorway. "Hurry. You are already late."
Jacky didn't need to be told twice. He rushed into the room he now knew was the lobby, joining a crowd of other students, and glanced at the other two stragglers following him in. There weren't many seats left around the room, so he squished in next to a thin, brown haired girl with wide green eyes. "Sorry, excuse me. There's not much room left, do you mind?"
The girl turned to stare at him, then shook her head. "No, it's fine." She told him in a quiet voice.
"Alright, good. I'm Jacky, by the way! Jacky Dietz. It's nice to meet you...I think?"
"Y-Yuri." She looked down at her feet.
He eyed her curiously, noting that she was dressed in a black leotard with tights, nothing but a thin looking hoodie over it. "Are you a dancer?"
"I am, yeah. I do ballet." She murmured.
Jacky grinned. "Oh wow, that's really incredible! I love dance. Always wanted to do that instead of football."
Yuri flashed him a nervous smile, an expression he wasn't quite sure was a positive one, and Jacky worried that he had offended her somehow. Just as he opened his mouth to reassure the wiry girl, however, a pair of double doors at the back of the room swung open with a loud bang. Looming in the doorway, a large teddy bear smirked brightly at the assembled students, the fuzzy face painted over with an enormous grin.
He didn't know how it was possible for a teddy bear to look so sinister, or for it to walk on its own, but Jacky did know that he recognized the pattern of the colors on that face...half black, and half white.
A/N: I would like to apologize profusely for the super super late chapter. The past month and a half has been a nightmare mess of personal catastrophes. I'm super glad to be back to this story and I hope to get back to a regular posting schedule now that life has settled down. Thank you all for bearing with me, and I hope you enjoy!