Test Drive Reloaded! #1

[magicademymods]

Test Drive #1



Welcome to Diatu (I Like Swords)

The Arrival Hall is all aflurry with activity! No one had expected so many Sundered to suddenly pop up, the staff find themselves desperately scrambling to keep up with the influx, and a bunch of new arrivals find themselves hanging out in the Hall lobby, waiting to be seen, sent home if possible, or counseled and prepared for student life if not. Rumors run like wildfire: some people believe they've been kidnapped by aliens, a worryingly persistent suggestion that this is a setup for a murder-tournament keeps circulating, and one or two nutcases insist that a dragon tinkered with the rules of magic and now they have to study at a magic school to survive. Pie stocks are grievously low, and thought Headmaster Birony herself appeared and began violating the rules of space and time to summon pies from the future, a second Headmaster Birony with an eyepatch, several war scars, and a wild hairdo appeared and promptly yelled at the first Headmaster for stealing her pies. A pie fight erupted. Pie stocks are even more grievously low now.

Still, here's your chance to talk to your fellow arrivals. Or aggressively attack the nearest target in an outrage (they set up a target dummy and labeled it VENT AGGRESSION HERE, and are trusting you guys on the honor system). Staff don't have time to talk, but they promise they'll get to you soon!

A Day In The Life

The sun is bright, the air is warm, a cool breeze blows across Anastara, clouds keep drifting directly through the island and engulfing people... it's summer on Ascelion, and the day is ripe for learning. Or as ripe as Diatu Magicademy ever can be -- though no one would trade the character and charm of the lively campus for some stodgy, regimented school more interested in forcing students into the mold than encouraging them to be their best, sometimes conditions in the Magicademy are a little inconvenient.

A toilet in Kedrigan Hall keeps clamping onto the butts of those who attempt to use it. Thus far, half a dozen students have been freed from its clutches by their friends, while reports of singed buttocks have increased twofold. (Yes, only twofold. Think about that for a minute.) Staff are on the lookout for a prankster rather than a commode, so as of yet the treacherous toilet has gone unpunished...

Not far away, a group of cleaning golems has occupied the promenade as part of an ongoing strike. As they possess only rudimentary intelligence, they believe this involves seizing objects from anyone who passes nearby and hurling them at a set of bowling pins. Meliandre Tomekin, Head of Groundskeeping, has set up shop across the Promenade; any student who wanders too close gets a big block of ice shoved into their hands, along with instructions to hold it still while she shows those reprobates what-for...

In the Great Hall proper, school clubs and activities have, as was inevitable, escalated competition for new students to yet another level which only isn't a war crime because it isn't part of a treaty yet: they've conscripted geese. Horrible geese, to be precise, who dispense flyers for various clubs with less subtlety than a nuclear holocaust. Some of them fight for dominance, others have teamed up to pin down innocent students and stuff leaflets down their throat, and one has a wand and is somehow casting Discovery spells?!

A Forgery!

"I tried a mass-Forging technique," the older student says, showing off the briefcase full of identical wands and a sign that says 'FOR $ALE CHEAP'. "Some of them are exactly what I intended, they self-correct runes, but the rest, well.. . I don't know, I can't tell, and I'm not really interested in finding out one by one, so... you buying?"

All sales final. No refunds. Caveat emptor. As for what the wands do, well... there's a reason he answered with an ellipsis when asked. On the other hand, maybe the effect isn't too terrible? Maybe it's even beneficial! Maybe the wand shoots out rainbows and muffins! Or maybe it just animates and strikes you vigorously about the head and shoulders...

Three Dragon War

Someone, we're not naming names, canons, or the color of eyes and the dragon to which they belong that forms said person's obsession, may or may not be indirectly responsible for the latest game craze sweeping Anastara: Three Dragon War, a collectible card game that features players as dragons, deploying spells, creatures, and Sundered against each other to destroy each and avoid the machinations of the Third Dragon. The awesome thing about the game is that the Third Dragon comes in all different forms: classic bundled-with-the-starter-pack Ire, super-rare Anastara Diatu, suspiciously-rare Cam Birony, ultra-common Large Eagull, and more. The concept of an outside force adding randomness to the battle and being manipulated in turn by cards means Three Dragon War is the hottest card game that's come along since the last card game that was the hottest that had come along came along.

Face-to-face, you find yourself in a duel over these cards and the magical images they summon. Can this untested deck come through if you believe in it? Or are statistics and probability actual things that actually happen? Dragon Battle! Jiao Long Fu!

There's One in Every Test Drive

Not every magical disaster is caused by some wayward student you don't know. Many of them are caused by you instead. To wit: you're on the spot in one of the magical labs, being called on to demonstrate a technique more advanced than others you've mastered so far. Failure is expected, and the wards should prevent any injury to others from a miscast spell. But will the sparks of your magic just sputter out and die? Or will you inadvertently mispronounce, misform, misshape, or miscalculate in a way that brings chaos to you and your lab partner?

(You could also manage to succeed in casting the spell, but that isn't very fun.)

Comments

Teenager V | Cyberpunk 2077

[wagerofloki]

Welcome to Diatu
Of the newest arrivals, nobody was probably happy to be here - it was jarring to blink and suddenly be elsewhere. To go from the constant roar of city clamor and traffic and the smell of trash, urine, and smog to somewhere decidedly quieter and less suffocatingly dirty. The crowd of people was the only thing that Val could find comfort in, but it was also a source of anxiety as well. She wasn't sure what to do with where she was at, so she did the first thing she usually did in a bad situation: found a wall and put her back against it so nobody could sneak up on her. Next was threat assessment: green eyes darting around as she took in the scene. Most seemed about as confused as she was, others were maybe a bit more comfortable here.

The teenager maybe stuck out a little even among the mess of new arrivals who were just as odd as she simply because she wore a tank with the f-bomb emblazoned on it in big red letters and a big hand giving the middle finger to any onlooker. It was supposed to fit tightly to her, it seemed, but it hung a little more loosely than it should have around her. She also sported a pair of very short denim shorts and some black-on-black chucks, though there was a strip of an orangey-yellow along the sides that glowed in the dark. Her nails were painted neon fucking green checkered with black - chipping, of course - and her hair was a generally unmanageable mess.

As the great Pie War of Arrivals began she would feel her hackles lower and it was only a matter of time before she picked up three almost completely intact pies and scurry off outside of the scene of the fighting to start eating her loot. When someone seemed to approach or be nearby she moved the pies she wasn't working on closer to her in an unconscious movement.

"If you're lookin' for pie you're gonna have to look elsewhere. These'r mine."

Bowling Games
So the first few times the golems managed to wrestle her agent out of her awful little hands to try to get a strike with it really pissed her off, but now Val found a new game. Now she was sticking her nose into closets around the school and conveniently finding objects that were definitely not hers to give to the golems to see if they could manage a strike with it. She'd found balls (that worked well, as she expected), random assortments of objects, she even managed to get one of the ice blocks from Ms. Tomekin to give to the golems (which was surprisingly successful).

It's entirely possible that she might have just "borrowed" something from you to give to the golems to see how they do with bowling a strike with it. Hopefully, it's not something of much sentimental value to you.

A Quiet Moment
Val had spent a good amount of time wandering the grounds and seeking out all of the hidey holes and doing a quick effort to find secret tunnels and the like. It had been to not much return, but that was fine. She'd found a place she could climb up and perch. The climbing and sitting with her legs over the edge of a building as the breeze hit her face and threw her hair back felt like home, even if the rest of the surroundings absolutely did not. Despite everything, she found she really did miss Night City and all of its trappings. Having a clear day like this reminded her of her favorite days back home.

She didn't notice that someone was below and had noticed her, or even that someone may have climbed up to join her. She was busy looking up at the sky and considering everything going on. For her to reflect like this was incredibly rare and it likely wouldn't happen again.

Wildcard
(OOC: Feel free to come up with something if you want!)

A Quiet Moment

[hyperdrivemonalisa]

Who needed reflection, anyway? Navel-gazing was so last year. Wasn't it? Isabel had indeed noticed a person up at the top of the Great Hall, way past time for anything.

Suspicious? A little, maybe, but it's not like there weren't insomniac night-owls who liked to perch dramatically on places, either. (Thanks, Dust!) The thought of her fuzzy blue friend had her mind settle on just how she was going to get up there, too.

Use the Musical Force Projector, of course!

~Get ready, get set, all systems go. Good life, godlike, wanna see it from the inside! Freefall, swan dive, looking for strange!~

The running leap she took had her hit the springboard the talisman projected properly--she was an athlete on par with an Olympian, after all--and fling herself upward. Had V been shaken from that reverie, she might see a red-and-orange robed streak pass by, briefly.

She landed on her feet on the roof, one hand touching it to balance herself, then stood up and glanced around. "What'cha doin' up here? 'Sup? I'm Isabel."

[wagerofloki]

The singing did catch her attention, though she wasn't sure where it came from. The streak of color flashed in the corner of her eye and she tensed up, her feet coming up to prepare her to hop up and get the fuck out if needed.

When a girl about her age landed on the roof and introduced herself Val relaxed.

"Val."

She kicked her feet back out and let her heels bounce against the building as she relaxed and peered down to watch the people below walk around.

"Just wanted to get away from it 'n try'n figure out what I think 'bout all this. Still dunno where I'm at with this clusterfuck."

A Quiet Moment

[whose_son_am_i]

Val hadn't been the only one doing some exploring. Loki was sure there was more to explore too, more secrets to find. He'd found a good spot earlier from which he planned to come and watch and take a break. This whole absurd situation required some thinking over.

A frown at first, when he noticed someone already up in said spot. Before deciding he didn't care, and just moved to climb up as well. Tall form settling not far away (given the perch) but not close either.

Welcome to Diatu

[textbookcase]

Harley blinked in surprise before shaking her head.

"Nah, don't worry about it, kiddo. Just wanted to tell ya I like your shirt." She smiled at the teen. "It's funny, you know? Not everyone here has a good sense of humor like that. 'Sides, pies are more fun to throw in someone's face than to eat."

Loki Laufeyson/Odinson | Marvel Cinematic Universe

[whose_son_am_i]

Welcome to Diatu
"Honestly, I think I'd prefer to be dead." Which was a lie, as Loki very much preferred being alive to being dead. Not least of which because he was all too aware of the mess left behind. Thanos with two of the Infinity Stones, half of their people slaughtered, Thor left alone... It was a new thing for Loki to actually care, but he'd come to accept that he did. At least a little bit. Enough to act to save their people against Hela. Enough to try to act against Thanos.

But this--this had to be a cruel joke. Him, in Magic School? The idea of having new power within him didn't frighten him, even at the cost of exploding eventually. He was already one of the most powerful magic users in Asgard, and had been regarded as dangerous and odd for being such his whole life. That part was not new. Nor did he really object to learning to train this new magic to add to his arsenal. It was the rest of the situation he found absurd. If he was alive, he needed to get back to his own universe--to attempt to stop Thanos. To help Thor.

So Loki is venting his frustration on the training dummy. Blasts of green-magic flying, interspersed with up close stabbing and slicing by his daggers. The stubborn thing refused to break however, just making him more annoyed as he tried to vent his aggression. He's not being too careful about the strength of those magic blasts either.

A day in the Life
Honestly, investigating the toilets was beneath him. So very very beneath him. But Loki wouldn't deny he was intrigued by the idea of it being a prankster rather than something inherent in the toilets themselves. Besides, the evidence that singed buttocks had only increased two-fold pointed to something wrong with the toilets anyway. A good prankster could fake it ONLY being the toilets, but clearly this one was not good enough since the staff were suspicious.

So despite it being beneath him, Loki wanted to find this prankster. Consider it a matter of pride to find them. And teach them to be smarter about not being caught.

Three Dragon War
All told, Loki would've preferred dice. But this was apparently the popular activity, and the magic of it intrigued him. Was it possible for players to affect it if they just believed?--what magic was that? Rather than play right away, however, Loki can be found observing various matches. Watching and studying to learn the ins-and-outs before he'll try it himself.

Wildcard
Got an idea? Hit me up here.

welcome to diatu

[protectiveink]

That was a hell of a display. Roisin watched, wide-eyed, as magic spattered against the hapless training dummy. On one hand, she ought to be scared.

On the other...well. That kind of got her temper up, especially since there were a bunch of kids around. They were enthralled, as young things tended to get at a freakin' rockin' lightshow. But it was also dangerous...

"Hey, ye booby, are ye done yet? Ye've got an audience, an' they're not all as great an' powerful as ye are!"

She picked up one of the pies (a smaller one, but blueberry...ooh, stains!) and lobbed it at the back of the Incarnation of Mischief's head.

Welcome to Diatu

[qualityfriend]

[If Loki looks up, he'll notice a shimmering blue shield around him and the dummy, which absorbs any stray blasts of magic. There's plenty of room for him to move around and no chance he'll run into it while attacking the dummy.

[Just outside is a teenaged girl, shaking her head, half irritated and half amused.]

Day In The Life

[ronstadt]

Ronstadt, meanwhile, was eyeing one of the bathroom doors nervously. He'd heard about the predicament, but, well, sometimes you had to chance things. Glancing over at Loki, he winced.

"You happen to know if any of the stalls in this one are, uh, you know. Safe?"

Entrapta | She Ra and the Princesses of Power

[sciencegirl]

A Day In The Life

People, Entrapta does not get. Golems? A little closer to her preferences. Sure, they're not robots. But they have that same edge of artifice as a robot or a clone that lets her see the touches of personality in their inhumanity that others might ignore.

Including their difficulties with work.

"Look, I promise I can help if you just calm down and talk to me! Please. I promise that you do deserve fair treatment for the amount of work you do. Just because you're tireless doesn't mean that you don't deserve additional time for personal development." Entrapta is calling over to the angry robots, and catching various flung objects with tendrils of hair and setting them neatly down beside of her.

A Forgery!

Entrapta isn't necessarily interested in the cheap price of the wands, she's interested in judging their various levels of 'incorrectness'.

There's a purple-haired woman (and it's a lot of purple hair and all of it is very busy juggling notepads and pens and measuring instruments) standing in front of a wall splattered with various colors of magical dribble. She's carefully regarding each misfire with precision and utmost attention recording to detailed information.

Unfortunately, her clothes are as much of a mess as that wall, thanks to whatever brand of failure these disaster wands have been contaminated with. She stops and taps her pen against her lower lip. It's held in her hair, and her real arms are crossed.

"There are far too few constants between these wands other than the fact they're wands. I'm very impressed that the person failed uniquely so consistently. Also sometimes with painful results but those have been noted as well."

Ignore the faint scorch marks on her.

A forgery

[whose_son_am_i]

"You've taken very detailed notes. I'd be curious to read them." Don't mind the tall-man looking over her shoulder who overheard her words.

day in the life

[blue_ice]

"Are you sure about that?" Kaiba's rather surprised to see someone...just calmly talking to the golems in this situation. No one's ever tried it, oddly enough.

"Personal development might end in horrible pain for all of us. You haven't seen the ways of the golems."

A Day in the Life

[hyperdrivemonalisa]

"Ma'am. With all due respect to you as Groundskeeper...I think the purple-haired lady has a point? I mean...didn't you create these guys to give yourself a break from a tedious job? So you could have more leisure time?"

Isabel is doing her best to turn on the charm, here. She's a good student, in good standing with her classes and her House (Valhudor, to judge by the color of her robes), and honestly, there are a few more reasons why she waded right into this without trying to put one over on the golems. Her grandfather has a whole lab full of constructs at his home, after all.

She does realize that Entrapta is doing her best to get the golems to cool down--without the use of Tomekin's ice blocks.

"Keep it up!" she says, shouting encouragement and giving Entrapta a thumbs up. "I think it's working!"

Of course, then she gets an ice block shoved into her arms. "Hey!"

Forgery

[wagerofloki]

So the truth of it all was that Val had scrounged up enough money and items worth trading that she was going to buy up quite a few of these faulty wands. Then she was gonna sell them for a much higher profit margin than the guy who made them was doing. He was short-sighted, really.

Val had a whole bundle of these faulty wands as she found the woman who was testing and writing down the effects of a whole bundle of these faulty wands. She watched the purple woman for a bit. She was entranced by the hair, but also curious of what effects the wands had (you know, for marketing purposes).

She watches for a hot minute (it's about 45 seconds that feels like 45 minutes) before speaking up.

"What do you care what all they do, anyway? Does it really matter?"

A forgery!

[affection_for_research]

There was so much for Gansey to process - the magical failures, the juggling, the hair (so much hair) - that it took a moment for him to speak. As he tried to sort through the information, he moved closer to the wall, examining the magical dribble and then researcher who had caused it. For a moment, he stared as he realized her hair wasn't moving like hair he was used to, then he mentally shrugged off the strangeness. Considering the things he'd seen Ronan dream up, it wasn't that weird.

"Perhaps the uniqueness was their goal?" Gansey wasn't certain if that could be correct, but if that was one of the few constants, other than all the items were wands, maybe that was the best option for research. "We only have their word for what the wands original usage was meant to be."

Princess Celestia | MLP:FIM

[letteropener]

I Like Swords

"Well, this is certainly unexpected."

There may be a cheap laugh to be found in the magic pony with the iridescent, waving mane and tail saying this. But Princess Celestia, while ever composed and graceful, was certainly not at home here. Though smiling and serene in appearance, her eyes flicked about far too quickly as she tried to keep track of everything going on. Multiple very strange beings, obvious temporal shenanigans, and her being brought here without warning? Oh, this was not comfortable at all.

A Day in the Life

Celestia craned her neck over her shoulder, glaring at, to all appearances, her tail.

"Now you get out of there," she said, to the gently-drifting hair. In response, a goose head poked out, let out a defiant honk, and then stuck a pamphlet into her mane so it was half-visible and totally disinclined to fall. Celestia half-turned as if to grab it herself, but the goose immediately ducked back into the mass of her tail.

A moment later, another pamphlet poked out. She was rapidly on the way to becoming a billboard for the Dueling Club.

There's One

Princess Celestia was intelligent, learned, and very skilled in magic -- by Equestrian standards. The rigid rules of Magicademy magic were quite another thing altogether, with their circles and their verbalizations and their mathematics. The latter proved her downfall this time, as the math she quickly muttered got out of sync with the numbers her hoof scribed in midair...

Sorry about that suddenly big limb of yours.

A Day in the Life

[whose_son_am_i]

Winged white horses were legend, even in Asgard. Mounts for the Valkyrie. So Loki isn't quite sure what to make of one here. A white winged horse with a horn no less, and mane and tail as bright as the Bifrost. The Goose turning her into a billboard was simply the icing on the cake. He couldn't help it, so he laughed. It was funny. It probably wouldn't be funny when the valkyrie showed up. Until then...

Maria Cyphert | Final Fantasy VIII (OC, CRAU, It's Complicated)

[gunbladegrrl]

A Day In The Life

A large assault rifle bangs into a set of pins, followed almost immediately thereafter by a cleaning golem.

A second golem found itself unceremoniously trapped in a headlock. "You DON'T! TOUCH!" She punctuated each word by slamming a fist into the golem's face. Her hand ought to be bruised and scraped from that, but oddly, the golem seemed to be getting the worst of it. "THE GUNBLADES!"

Normally Maria's far calmer and more rational than this... but her weapons were a particular berserk button of hers.

"Any of the rest of you wanna play? There's enough of me to go around, you rock-things!" She sneered at the other golems for a second, then rolled her eyes. "A-plus dialogue there, Maria," she muttered, her golem-punching a little more listless now. "Rock things. Terrific trash talk."

Triple Triad Dragons?

Maria technically did understand the concept of "turn down a challenge". Of course, she technically understood the concept of spaceflight, but she wasn't doing any of THAT any time soon either. The only problem was, this was nothing like the games she understood...

"Okay, so I play the Large Eagull, which... as I understand it, doesn't do a damn thing because of that, it just sits there till I make it do something. And I play 'Magic Wand' on it, which gives it a +2 to Discovery..."

Looking up at her opponent, Maria shrugged rather helplessly. How a bird using a wand made the slightest bit of sense was totally beyond her.

A Day in the Life

[hyperdrivemonalisa]

Isabel had seen a lot of things in her time here at Diatu Academy.

One thing she'd never expected to see was a girl, about her age, punching Professor Tomekin's golems in the face and howling about gunblades of all things. (Hey, her dad was a video game nerd, okay? It might be classic in Isabel's time, but...she knew what gunblades were.)

"Uh. Excuse me, miss? They're golems. And uh, probably, they don't know any better. They're not too bright. The Professor usually uses them for cleaning and fixing things. But she's kind of hard on them. So that's why they're out here. Um. Striking."

Yeah, they're not close enough to the Groundskeeper for Isabel's voice to carry, or else she might be in trouble.

Sebastian Carter Hokori-Anderson | OC

[dulcet_cellist]

Welcome to Diatu (I Like music, tea, warm socks, reading about worlds full of magic and swords....)

To be honest, the only reason he was considering going back to college was to have something to distract his thoughts from the overwhelming and sometimes crushing reality that Jack was gone.

One reason, not the only reason.

He could return to Berkeley. No. He couldn't return to Berkeley. He could apply to another school. Julliard had been an option a very long time ago before his father had shipped him off to a boarding school in the hopes he'd end up in Harvard or Oxford or some other boring school.

A boarding school where he'd met Jack...

Jack was gone.

Jack is gone.

The shock of finding himself in a room full of strangers with so little information beyond "magic" and "academy" and a bunch of "rumors" spreading like wildfire almost made the entire situation comical. Like lost your mind laughing hysterically, comical. But not really because if you laugh you also open a door for other emotions to burst out. Painful emotions best left locked away for the moment.

So when the pie war began the only thing Sebastian could do was get as far away from the mess as he could manage while also trying not to imagine how much joy this entire situation would bring Jack.

"I'm going insane with grief." He decided, pushing his fingers through his hair and rubbing his face. "Insomnia and grief."

[whose_son_am_i]

"You're also going to get hit with a pie, if you don't pay attention." From further away, also watching the chaos, was a tall man with dark hair. Wearing blackish-green armor with gold and green accents. "Not all of them are as careful with their aim as they should be, either."

finally someone from berkeley idk why the city's been in my head

[wagerofloki]

"Yeah, think I'm in a drunk sleep'n havin' a wild dream'r maybe a little somethin' else that could be considered fun."

Not too far off from him was a teenager that was roughly 5'5" and the vast majority of it leg. She wore very short denim shorts and a tank that said the F bomb in big letters, with a hand flipping the viewer off to complete the look. She wore what appeared to be all black chucks, though a little light strip ran along the side bumpers in red. Her nails were painted red and black checkered.

"Grief over what? All this wasted food?" Which... Wasn't a joke, and wasn't meant to be taken as one.

(OOC Also just wanna apologize for Val upfront. She's just like this - if anything bothers you or you want me to change it just poke me coopyey or Lin can give you my discord)

[unswervingcompanion]

Hendrik had no idea who the youth was, but he was about to get hit with pies flying in all directions. He managed to lift his gloved hand and let the cream pie smack against the brown leather harmlessly to have it avoid hitting the boy who was simply standing here looking pretty lost. And in a way it reminded him of the look on his charge's face when he got that way.

The glove clenched around the foil pie tin and the knight tossed it. Why people were wasting food as a sort of fun thing was just beyond him. But he didn't try to solve it because the Luminary would probably disapprove of his methods. And anything was better than getting that look.

So he turned to the one who looked pretty lost now. "We should get you to somewhere safer."

Ada Vessalius | Pandora Hearts

[occultfan]

Arrival
For some arriving at a magical school suddenly and unexpectedly wpuld certain be something to worry about. Not Ada. Far from it in fact. Upon finding out she could actually use magic she squealed with absolute glee.

She couldn't believe her luck at all honestly. Being able to finally do soemthing she could have only dream of before. Maybe she was a little too happy about it as it dawned on her others might think something is odd.

"Ah, sorry. I just got excited."

Learning
Once Ada was sorted and comfortable she was already at whatever book she could find. Her glances from page to page to see what magic could do here and what she could even learn. It was all quite fascinating to her.

She was sitting at a table with at least three different books open as she looked over at anyone near by curious.

"Is it okay if I ask something? About what you are reading?"

[unswervingcompanion]

Hendrik was sitting there trying to study. This didn't come as easily to him as it might to others and so he tried to sequester himself away and remain isolated. So of course the knight heard the other's question and lifted his head to look directly at the other.

"Questions are never any trouble. I am reading about astronomy and apparently it is the study of the stars."