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Xindaris · 04-27-2016, 05:28 PM

PersonS
By Xindaris

0: Prologue

{Day 0: Thursday, April 2}

It's come to the point where the only one you can be perfectly honest to is yourself. And to be perfectly honest, you've just stopped caring.

You stare at your reflection in the airport bathroom mirror: Male, caucasion, sixteen years of age, skinny to borderline emaciated. Wearing blue jeans, a blank, sleeveless white t-shirt, a backpack and a pair of phones like a backwards necklace, the wire from the left side trailing its way into your pocket. It's attached to one of your two real possessions, which pumps a randomized mix of obscure music--anything that's free online, really--up into your ears nearly all of the time. The other one is the sole occupant of your backpack, a two-year-old laptop. It was a gift which you kept because it was useful, and it's unlikely you're going to get a replacement for it anytime soon. Your hair is short, a little rough but not terrible, and dyed a very dark blue. The color is easily mistaken for black, and you tend to find you can gauge how much attention a person is paying to your appearance by how long it takes them to notice it. Some people go, "Hey, your hair's blue!" Others just sort of stare at it for a few seconds as if a rat had fallen on it.

The look your reflection is giving back could be described as tired, from the flight. Sad or annoyed, maybe, for having to move again. But you know it for what it really is: Empty.

You must have been doing this for a longer time than you thought. The policeman they put in charge of getting you where you're supposed to go pokes his head in the door and says, "Son, you--? Oh."
You turn away from your reflection and nod. "Yeah. Sorry to keep you." (Not that you mean that.)

On the drive over, the policeman tries to make conversation a couple of times, but apparently concludes you're tired or something and gives up. After that, you raise the headphones up to your ears and listen, and watch out the windows, seeing your new hometown for the first time. You'll be here for at least the next two years if everything goes as planned, so you might as well try to get used to it.

[Phones]

Greenhaven is a fairly new city. Apparently it was a tiny farming town less than fifty years ago. It's..shiny, even under the dark of night. It was carefully constructed, the public transportation set up to be able to get within reasonable walking distance of anywhere. It's very modern, but it's also in the south. Not the deep south, maybe, but south enough. The policeman has a distinct accent, anyway, and the airport advertised Greenhaven's "small-town hospitality" alongside its "big city convenience."

You are a Ward of the State, and the State has evidently decided to send you to boarding school. Hence the policeman picking you up instead of another foster family, and hence when his car stops to idle in front of a building it's a condo-looking place amid a crowd of other, similar condo-looking places..well, okay, it's actually a dormitory.

"I don't have a key or anything," you say while getting your backpack and suitcase out of the car.
"It's in the building. Just knock, kids your age are always up at this hour anyhow." You get the impression he didn't volunteer himself for the late-night chauffeur job. Once you're fully out of the car, it drives off.

Next to the door is a small thumbtack board with a notice at the top that says "Do not remove!", followed by a paper labeled "Dorm Roster". Everything under those words is obscured by a third, much stranger, piece of paper.

First of all, it doesn't look like it's being held to the board by anything. Maybe someone glued it to the dorm roster? Second, it looks like older parchment of some sort, and has some kind of curly font handwritten on it, none of which is in English. It's...some kind of symbols you can't quite make sense of. It's hard to focus on them for some reason. Beneath that is a pair of long blank lines with enough room to write above each. You get the impression it's some kind of contract. And...a pen is clipped to the lower left corner of the paper.

Still not entirely sure this is real, you look back at the top. You feel like it says something, even though you can't exactly read it. You feel like you can make out a couple of important phrases:
In exchange for the power to protect...agree to use that power to protect the others.
That's as much as you're able to make out after some staring.

Well.

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