Shindou Hikaru Intro (OTA)

[lets_go_five]

 Open/locked?: Open
Who: Hikaru and anybody who wants to put up with him
What: Arrival (Auradon)
Warnings: Uh, nothing I can think of offhand, but I'll edit this if I need to?

Hikaru woke up in the snow.

Which was the first red flag, really. It wasn't like it didn't snow in Tokyo, it did, but usually not enough to do anything useful with. So this was... weird.

There were also a lot of meticulously trimmed hedges and things, which wasn't really a thing in Tokyo either. The middle of the city wasn't exactly the greenest of places, not like this, unless you were in a park or playground, but this didn't look like anyplace he'd ever seen. Red flag number two.

Three, and probably the most obvious, was the giant building in front of him. Was that a castle? Like, knights and dragons and stuff kind of castle? He'd only ever seen something like that in fairy tale stories (and Tokyo Disney, once when he was little), and even then, he hadn't seen a lot of it. Royal buildings in Japan were of a much different style, after all.

And four, was the fact that he was absolutely positive he'd been inside last he knew. He'd probably fallen asleep going over a game- it wouldn't be the first time.

Hikaru pinched himself in the arm as hard as he could. This had to be a dream. Never mind that he was freezing cold, it still had to be some figment of his imagination.

"Ouch!" he cried out at the sharp pain on his arm, and then looked back up. Nope, weird castle was still there.

"What the atari-" he murmured, then blinked. That wasn't what he'd said. "Joseki. Gote. Hane." No, no, and no. What was happening? How was he being censored in real time? And Go terms?

There was no way this was real. It couldn't possibly, this was all too weird, even for Hikaru, who had literally been haunted by a Go obsessed ghost. He had to be dreaming still, somehow. Or he'd hit his head on the goban when he crashed and now he was hallucinating? That was a sobering thought. Still, hallucination or not, he was getting cold just sitting here in the snow.

Time to figure out how to get warm, somehow, probably inside. He got up, dusted himself off- oh hey, he had his backpack, weird but cool, he wasn't going to complain- and started moving toward the castle. Maybe by the time he got there, he'd be awake and he wouldn't even have to worry about it.

Comments

[utauhoshina]

Ugh. Utau needed a break from the building. She had to find a good place to sing. Some place she could let her voice free. Some place away from the people who looked at her and saw her past, kept her locked in it.

She was wearing pale pink blouse with a dark red panel down the front and a pair of black slacks, her blond hair pulled up into pig tails. She stopped when she saw him, violet eyes narrowing. With that two tone hair she couldn't tell if he was a goody goody or possibly cool. But either way, when she wanted to be alone, he was mostly just annoying.

It didn't help that her angel chara, El, was dancing around his head. Clearly he didn't see El, which told her a lot... and pretty much nothing at the same time.

She scowled finally and stepped to one side. "Go in if you want, but don't think I'm about to hold the door for you."

[aquawayfinder]

Shocking no one, snow or no snow, Aqua had been out for a jog. She had been heading back when she heard him and shifted her path and her pace to walk towards him. "Hello," she called to him.

So many new people, recently!

[souls_of_roles]

Kyoko had finally been kicked out to go get some fresh air. She was twitchy over that, she wanted to finish that coat she had been sewing. But now that she was outside she felt so much better.

She didn't see him at first, eyes on the snow all over everything. It all looked so magical. Like there could be a fairy hiding anywhere! She danced through the snow, intent on a bush near him. Could there be a fairy there? Would Mallia know?

Even if the teenager hadn't been heading for him, she was impossible to miss as her work uniform - some sort of jumpsuit with logos over a white shirt - was so bright pink it was like a curse. A colour impossible to unsee. It burned itself into the eyes and brain.

Other than the loud pink jumpsuit the girl herself was kind of plain and unremarkable. "Is there a fairy here?" she asked the bush, then she looked up to a tree. "Or here maybe?" she asked, her smile child bright.

[queen_butterfly]

She needed a quick break, a change of pace. Too much sewing, too much of her notebook, too much of getting nowhere with her magic experiments....

It wasn't playing in the snow that she was doing. No, she was just... clearing the path between the school and the castle. And she had to put the snow she was lifting from the path somewhere, right? Perhaps if she even made the moved snow obvious, it would serve to help guide people to one of the two buildings, since more had been arriving again?

So she gestured, and the snow seemed to scoop itself up, lifting up a few feet into the air before moving aside and standing up to add itself to the bit of a tower that was forming, tall and thin, on the yard. Another few steps down the path, gesturing again, the snow doing as she bid once more, and adding itself to the spire. It wasn't the fastest task, but she wasn't exactly doing it to be efficient, pressing the snow into the shape as she was, condensing it. It was gaining in size rather slowly, but the way she was doing it, it might well last a decently long while.

Step, step, step, gesture. Step, step, step, gesture....

She certainly stood out against the white of the wintery surroundings, though. A long black dress with a generous skirt, those large outer sleeves catching the near lack of breeze prettily... hair in her usual updo, some sort of decorative little cape hanging down behind her, disappearing down behind her skirt...

She seemed a bit oblivious to things around her at the moment, though, intent as she was on her task. Which was, perhaps, a bit ironic, considering that she was at least partially intending to do this to make it easier for people to find the buildings and get out of the cold... and yet, there was a newcomer in the area, and she hadn't even noticed them yet.

[nadenagi]

The person picking a delicate path through the snow seemed to be a pretty young girl, maybe all of 12 or 13, with purple hair in a high ponytail that seemed to sway gracefully as she walked. Even in her snug coat and boots everything about her seemed to be graceful.

She gave a warm friendly smile. "Hello! Are you a friend of my brother's?" she asked.