diatuooc | Test Drive Reloaded! #1

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.)

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

With most people, she might have broken off at that. With him, she didn't dare. An odd sort of unintentional compliment. A pie hit the side of her face. She kept up the glare, though she did drag a finger through the mess and licked it off. No sense wasting good sugar.

That would be when Crowley learned there was nothing funnier than a very intensely staring girl covered in pie. You know... right before a pie caught him in the face and sent his sunglasses clattering across the floor. It really wasn't the wisest of ideas to stand around and laugh in the middle of the pie fight.

Well didn't that just give her an idea? And the chaos of the pie fight....

Everyone in the Kingdom had thought that Mal's spell book was her focus item. She wanted them to think that. So she rarely let anyone see her do magic without it. But her focus? A ring hidden by her fingerless gloves. It was the pointing that did it, in essence, not the spell book.

But with the noise of the pie contest covering the sound of her voice, his eyes locked on her eyes so she should be able to gesture without him noticing if she kept her hand lower than her belt and kept the gesture subtle. Her eyes were already green, so that wouldn't give her away. The trick was minimizing lip movements since that could be in caught in his peripheral vision. She'd have to keep the spell short and do her best to make it look like she was... ah!

Another finger full of pie as she glared to make it look like she was chewing as her other hand made the gestures, using the finger still in her mouth to further distort the motions to prevent lip reading...

"Whatever he tastes within the hour
Take the sweet and turn it sour."

She smirked as the green trail followed her finger. She would have rather spelled the pies than him directly, but she couldn't risk more than a simple couplet. Not her best work, but she was looking forward to the results. Especially if she could goad him into eating more and more, thinking they were both eating fetid pie.

Because Mal was from the Isle, and the spell followed intent. So to her, sour wasn't a sour flavor like lemons, it was sour like spoiled. A pie eating contest where he was eating trash and she had pure sugar? Bring it on.

After that last pie attack he had cream all over his face and it was pretty nigh impossible not to end up getting some of it in his mouth. You might expect a fresh pie to... actually taste pretty good. This did not. It tasted like week old gone-off cream with perhaps just a touch of mold.

"Ugh! Are you actually eating this??"

Crowley's nose scrunched as he looked away from Mal long enough to stare at the table of pies.

"They put this out for kids to eat?? What kind of school serves kids rotten food?"

He knew a few demons that might have liked this slop if demons ever actually had any need to eat. He didn't care much for it. Crowley had been too spoiled by Aziraphale's taste in fine cuisine and he wasn't very good at taking hints. For all he knew Mal was eating rotten pie and really enjoying it which blew his mind but... humans could be weird.

His fingers snapped and all that pie that had coated his face and ruined his sporty jacket faded into dust to drift away on the faint breeze.

She smirked. Good, the spell took. "What?" she asked, crossing her arms as she sauntered closer. "Can't take it? Too soft for a little slop?" she asked with a fake sound of pity. She helped herself to more of the pie off of her own face as a clear challenge.

Practically clean and very nearly sparkling his weigh shifted to one hip but the challenge flew right on by unaccepted. Eating contests weren't really up this demon's alley even hen the food tasted pretty good.

"Not really my scene, slop. You really seem to be getting into it though."

Considering that was her second helping of face-pie.

"Won't that make you sick?"

"Guess I'm not as delicate as you are," she said with a smirk. "But then it is always the guys who talk big that are the weakest."

She was feeling quite smug and pleased with herself. "I won this one, candyman."

"Whoa... whoa, delicate? You think I'm delicate just because I don't want to eat some gone off pie? I think that's intelligent, not delicate."

Then she had to go and use that nickname. Candyman. Candy-Man. Nope, that didn't ring any bells. Well, other than being the titular character in a gruesome horror movie. There was a character named Anthony in it so, maybe that was where the confusion spawned from.

"You didn't win anything. There was nothing on the line. It's not like we were squaring off to see who won control of the playground. And the name is Crowley, not sure where you got that Candyman thing from. Is that an attempt at a schoolyard taunt?"

"I'd say it is no use to play dumb, but you're so good at it, it's almost convincing. Sadly for you, I'm not that gullible. Sell it to someone who is buying it. Because I'm not."

Some where down the hall another pie took to the air but it flew past the pair of them, hitting neither.

"I have no idea what you are going on about. Are you trying out for the school bully position?"

"You actually have the nerve to pretend like you haven't done anything to me at all? You cannot possibly be trying to play innocent," she said, disgusted. "You might fool someone fundamentally good who is desperate to believe in second chances, but evil knows better. I don't know what game you think you're playing, but you're not going to win."

"Have I done something to you?"

It was possible. Demon and all. When you get an assignment from Head Office you never really know who is going to be caught up in it.

"Must have been something really good. Bad. Whatever... what was it?"

"You have got to be kidding me," she said, disgusted. "Fine, you want to play the game, then just admit I'm the biggest evil here and that you're not half as bad as you pretend to be, and we can go our separate ways."

His confusion had colored his expression but at that a wickedly devilish grin took over.

"You're more evil than I am? HA!"

He hissed a laugh as he sauntered past her, never holding in his mind a single doubt that his own evil nature far surpassed hers. He was a literal demon and she was a kid! He had seniority here.

"You? You're just a... a little school bully. You haven't done anything to make me think you are even half as evil as I am! What's your grand accomplishment? Have you stolen some one's lunch money today?"

He stepped past her and tossed a little wave over his shoulder on the way by.

"Eating spoiled pie doesn't make you evil! It's gross... but not evil! Chow, kid."

Crowley was still laughing as he walked on down the hall.

Test Drive Reloaded! #1

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Lemme know if this needs to be edited, but was too funny to resist.

Re: Lemme know if this needs to be edited, but was too funny to resist.

Re: Lemme know if this needs to be edited, but was too funny to resist.

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