August Event

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Please let August be better than July I'm begging

✽ Due to 10+ classes raising their ranks last month, ALL characters have access to the courtyard via the door in the locker area and the windows facing the courtyard.
✽ Characters with 1-10 tallies are not able to get any further past the end of the courtyard before they fall unconscious; characters with 10-20 can get halfway to the pool building before the same happens to them; characters with 20+ tallies can reach the pool building but unfortunately, the door is on the other side. There are no windows on the walls, but from the clocktower, characters can see that it has a glass ceiling, though they are unable to see inside.
✽ Outside, there is no breeze, and it occasionally rains ash.
✽ Characters going up to the 4th floor will feel that the door is warm to the touch, and will occasionally open (see: missions)
✽ The student store opens, with the door propped open with a doorstopper. The npc running the store is currently not interested in conversation, but may be available for threading in the future and is available for threading in the toplevel below. Please see the updated bonus activity page for more information.
✽ Posted on the bulletin board and also handed to each club president before break is the notice that proof of club activity is due at the end of break. Please submit these proofs in the toplevel below.
✽ There is another ad on the bulletin board advertising an exchange student program for the month of October. Applications will be taken until the end of August, and there is a 300 merit point fee. Sister cities include Death City, Devildom, Ishigami Village, Lanling, LazyTown, and Maiami City.

Comments

[compendiem]

[ Minato looks away at that "no," as if Atsushi were telling him he's stupid and wrong. But he does end up bringing his gaze back up, as if encouraging Atsushi through his hesitation.

People are trapped in this school, himself included, but what about this? ]

If we all go to France, though... isn't that getting out?

[thetyger]

[There's a second where Atsushi looks like he wants to protest that solution, because it can't be that simple, and it's a "school" exchange program and clearly suspicious, but... Minato does have a point. Sometimes the simplest explanations are the correct ones, after all.]

We can just go to France.

[Problem solved...?]

[compendiem]

Yeah.

[ Simple solutions are the best, in Minato's opinion, because they're easy to try and easy to fail, but at least doing so crosses out one of the options and lets them move onto the next one.

France.

Alright. ]

Do you have enough to apply?

[thetyger]

Um, no. I...

[He is a poor student apparently, and even in this vaguely-remembered school life he has a ravenous appetite and most of his notes on merit points have stated he spent them in the vending machines.]

No. Do you?

[compendiem]

No.

[ Honestly... same. Minato suspects he would've been the same sort of student, sleeping through class and waking up when the lunch bell goes off and then going off to buy melon bread. At least students get points for attendance, though Minato isn't even assigned a class. ]

Doesn't mean we can't earn some. We have a month. ...How do you get merit points?

[thetyger]

[Only now does Atsushi seem to notice Minato's different uniform.]

Do you not go to this school?

[Not that he really does either, but that's unimportant.]

Where did you come from?

[There's a part of him that wants to accuse Minato of being the mastermind of this situation, but it's tamped down by fear of looking like an idiot should the uniform be a red herring.]

[compendiem]

[ Atsushi isn't the first person who looked at Minato and went "sus..."

Anyways, Minato shakes his head to deny going to this school, but the other question makes him pause and look away, like he's trying to figure out what to say. How can he say it? The truth is absurd enough to sound like a lie, and sounds more like a lie for each second that passes. ]

I came... from the elevator. Elizabeth came to get me, and we went up in the elevator.

[thetyger]

Oh.

[It's not that unreasonable in terms of origins; Atsushi would certainly say he'd come from "somewhere outside in the dirt" considering his life here before that isn't real. At least that's the going theory he's accepting at present. Maybe Minato's uniform isn't a different school, but he isn't a student at all and works the elevator. The elevator this school does not have, at least he thinks it doesn't.]

Okay. You know, I don't think the exchange program is going to be a way out of here, really.

[He will just breeze right past the elevator topic.]

[compendiem]

[ Oh. They're not going to talk about the elevator at all, and Minato breathes an almost-audible sigh of relief at that. The gratitude is there, but instead of directing it at Atsushi, he looks back at the poster like it'll be different each time he looks at it and of course it doesn't. ]

Why don't you think so?

[ It can't just be pessimism. ]

[thetyger]

[Atsushi seems to contemplate on that a bit, it's more a gut feeling, but that isn't something you tell people in these sorts of situations. He reads the names of the towns on the flyer again.]

I don't think they're real places, and I think that, um, if we examine things more closely, other things, that won't make sense either.

[That's sort of rambling and he hasn't gotten to the point yet, so he tries to speed up the foundational framework, which just results in some excessive hand gestures and emphasis on random words.]

B-because this is an illusion. I mean, it might be real in the sense that we can interact with it, like a pocket dimension, but someone has made it and there aren't really any new places to go here. It's um, a backdrop? A set dressing. Say you have this ability to create this pocket dimension, or um, a collective illusion in people's minds - it might be that - either way, and you have to expend a certain about of energy to keep the illusion up or the pocket dimension functional, and you can't waste that on accurate details when it's just a flyer on a message board. So- so things... get messed up... in the background.

[The flyers may be an unintentional distraction from what's really going on.]

[compendiem]

[ It's appreciated, really, the gestures and the emphasis that prompts Minato to reel his attention in to the really important parts of the explanation, quiet at he listens and nodding a little as Atsushi runs out of steam. ]

...That makes sense. Like in those old cartoons where the background is painted but anything that needs to be animated looks different.

[ There's a clip demonstrating this perfectly that I cannot find so Atsushi will just have to imagine. ]

So... what we should really be focusing on is... the weirdest thing in the school? Which would be... the elevator... probably.

[thetyger]

Right. The one thing that's off, but that's a major contradiction. Something that's structurally impossible or glaringly obvious and can't be overlooked like the flyer.

[Minato's analogy is lost on him, having not seen many old cartoons, but Atsushi attempts to incorporate it anyway.]

We find something that's supposed to be part of the animation, not the... painted background... and um, i-it would be different or wrong because it can't be changed through this illusion or it's a clue set there on purpose. Where's the elevator?

[compendiem]

[ Who would leave clues on purpose, and who can say they'd be help rather than a trap? It's not something Minato thinks too hard on, though, because he'll take things as they come and right now what's coming is the elevator he turns toward without another word and expects Atsushi to follow. It's a very short walk away from the bulletin board and past the rows of locker as if he were heading to the front door, and then he turns and right next to it are the elevator's double doors. ]

It goes up three floors... and then halfway down to the center of the earth or something.

[thetyger]

[Follow, he does. As Minato explains where it goes, Atsushi nods and gives the elevator a once over. Until he mentions the center of the earth, and that has Atsushi taking a step back.]

That's- that's a long way, and I don't know anything about elevators. Someone who knows more mechanical things should maybe look into the elevator theory in case they need to all the way down there!

[He'd have no problems with this elevator scenario going down to the depths of hell or wherever, stuck in a tiny box as is descends and heats up from the core of magma... if he had use of his abilities and didn't have to worry about much of that. As the fragile normal human he seems to be at the this point, it's not a good idea.]

I'll go ask around for volunteers!

[Bye, Minato.]