PersonS {A Rejected Title and a False Explanation}

PersonS
By Xindaris

0: Prologue

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{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.

>

SpoilerShow

Welcome! This is a story roughly inspired by Persona 3/4, but very, very different from those games. Hopefully a text adventure doesn't break the rules around here.

Goals:
-Get people to read my adventure
-Update said adventure an average of more than once a week
-Refrain from going mad

If there's even one suggestion since the last update and I haven't updated this week, please bug me about it. PM me. Post something else. My adventure has no necro-posts, only resurrection-posts.

Hopefully a text adventure doesn't break the rules around here.

Actually, text adventures are very popular on Eagletime!

>Why are you here?
>Enter the building

Can you get inside the building, or is this contract waiting to be signed? Does it come off the board? How would you feel about becoming a magical girl?

>Why are you here?
>Enter the building

Can you get inside the building, or is this contract waiting to be signed? Does it come off the board? How would you feel about becoming a magical girl?

You grab the bottom end of the paper and pull; it feels like something is holding it to the top of the board, but just when it sems like you're about to tear the paper in two it suddenly comes loose and you're just holding it, pen and all. Behind the paper is the actual roster, which has four names:

TAB-Nene Amayo, Sophomore
TAB-Leatrice Therian, Junior
TAB-Marcus Radclif Jr., Junior
TAB-Alvin Perell, Junior

The last name is yours, so it looks like this is the right place. As a student of whatever your new high school's name was without any other proper home, you're being sent to live in this dorm, which apparently used to be some kind of apartment or condo or something. It's all being paid for by some rich people you've never heard of as some kind of charity thing.
The third name...you think his last name looks familiar, but you're having trouble placing it. The first two names...look like girls' names? You guess this must be a co-ed dorm.

You return your focus to the odd paper, which you're holding. Something weird is definitely going on with it: You should be able to either read all of it or none of it with the weird symbols, but the few phrases you picked out before seem to be the only things you see in it. Maybe you're just tired...?

You decide to try the door, moving the odd parchment to your left hand and then pulling on the handle with your free hand. The handle barely budges: It's locked. You could hardly say you were surprised by this development.

>

SpoilerShow

I've decided to do the "edit thread title when updating" thing that seems to be popular.

Put away the contract. You can look at it in the morning.

Now you're going to either have to knock /really/ hard or start throwing gravel at windows. Are there any lights on to indicate which windows you should throw small rocks at?

Kick the door open.

Put away the contract. You can look at it in the morning.

Now you're going to either have to knock /really/ hard or start throwing gravel at windows. Are there any lights on to indicate which windows you should throw small rocks at?

Kick the door open.

You decide to try putting away the contract for now; if it's some kind of hallucination it'll be gone by the morning anyway. So you open the main pocket of your suitcase from the top and stuff it in there.

Before going for any more extreme options, you try knocking on the door, a few solid taps of your knuckles.

You hear some muffled voices from inside, and a moment later the inside of the door clicks a bit and it opens, pouring out a stream of cold air.

"Hello?" You're caught somewhat off-guard by the appearance of the girl who answered: Namely, she's at least a half-foot taller than you are. The rest of her appearance arrives in your brain about a second later: Straight, shoulder-length light brown hair, bright green eyes, complexion's slightly reddish. She's in good shape, athletic even, with one heck of a figure. That kind of thing doesn't really affect you much, but as a male teenager it's hard not to at least notice it. She's fully dressed (blue jeans and an ecru sweater) and seems to be fully awake, but she does seem confused by the sudden arrival of a visitor this close to midnight.

>

SpoilerShow

Normally I don't plan on updating twice in the same day, both because I don't usually have enough time and to give people enough time to all voice their opinions on things, but I think it's a good idea to zoom forward a little bit in this early section, there aren't really any super important decisions to be made yet...

Guess the name. There's a one in three chance you'll be right. And, if you're wrong, you can go back to a previous save state and try again.

> "You must be Nene Amayo. I'm Alvin the Chipmunk. You'd think that Simon would be the Chipmunk with blue hair but it's me. Howdy. I like JRPGs, music made by furries, and women. I'm straight. Very heterosexual. I'm not in the mood for listening to anything you have to say about yourself, so just direct me to the dorm of my roommate, Marcus Radclif Jr. Is he related to the Daniel Radcliff of Harry Potter fame? His name sounds familiar. Don't answer if I'm wrong I really don't care"

SpoilerShow

did you know caucasian is a racist term and that you should just call him a white guy? i don't care to find articles explaining why. i'm kind of lazy. my bad.

Do you have documents proving your right to take residence here? Please tell me you do, no one wants any more trouble this time of night.

Alternatively, pretend you're being chased by a brutal ex and you need somewhere to hide, because sowing the seeds of chaos is a wonderful hobby.

Guess the name. There's a one in three chance you'll be right. And, if you're wrong, you can go back to a previous save state and try again.

> "You must be Nene Amayo. I'm Alvin the Chipmunk. You'd think that Simon would be the Chipmunk with blue hair but it's me. Howdy. I like JRPGs, music made by furries, and women. I'm straight. Very heterosexual. I'm not in the mood for listening to anything you have to say about yourself, so just direct me to the dorm of my roommate, Marcus Radclif Jr. Is he related to the Daniel Radcliff of Harry Potter fame? His name sounds familiar. Don't answer if I'm wrong I really don't care"

Do you have documents proving your right to take residence here? Please tell me you do, no one wants any more trouble this time of night.

Alternatively, pretend you're being chased by a brutal ex and you need somewhere to hide, because sowing the seeds of chaos is a wonderful hobby.

You think about saying something insane but decide not to for now. You really like it better when people don't think you're crazy: It makes them a lot less annoying. Besides, you'd hate to give someone the impression that several years of going to psychologists has been for nothing. It could be fun, though. Maybe you can start trolling people after you've convinced them that some baseline sanity is present.

"Are you..Nene?" you guess. It's a one-in-two shot, after all. "I'm Alvin." You have some identification buried in your suitcase somewhere, but you're reasonably sure you can convince her you're supposed to be here without that.
And you are right. She gets a look of recognition after another second or so of confusion. "Oh..right. I'm Lea, actually, Neen's..." She waves vaguely backwards. You guess that's how 'Nene' is actually pronounced. "Nice to meet you. Uh, come on in." She moves back from the door, keeping it open, and you pull your things inside.

It's about as cold in here as the air blasting out through the door suggested. This room looks like a combination living room-kitchen, with a couch and a couple of comfortable chairs all facing a TV on the wall opposite the door you came in through, closer to the left side. On the right of the opposite wall is a door. There's a kitchen area in the corner to your right with tiled floor; the rest is carpet.

Lea closes the door behind you, and talks in the general direction of the couch. "Hey. New guy's here."
You see someone climb up the couch facing backwards so her head pokes up from behind its back."Heyy, welcome! I'm Nene." Her voice sounds like there's a filter in her mouth that makes 50% of every breath helium. And it's obnoxiously cheerful. "You're like five hours late!" She looks kind of asian you guess, and has short dark hair in a partially spiked style.
"Flight was delayed," you say curtly. You've gotten reasonably good at reading people. It's nothing malicious, you just found it was easier to get them to leave you alone if you understood why they were bothering you in the first place. But you can just tell this one is going to be trouble.
"Aw, happens to the best of us. Where ya from, anyway?"

There are a lot of answers to that question. You lived in a suburb of Chicago for eleven years before your parents were shot, and since then you've been all over the place in foster care. But you usually save the fact that your parents were murdered for a time you need some shock value, as it's the kind of information that only works once.

>

SpoilerShow

The paradigm for interpreting commands in this adventure is "putting thoughts in the main character's mind". They're influential thoughts, but he's able to decide against doing some things.

> Mostly Chicago, then five years of complicated.

"You sound like a chipmunk. I'm named after a chipmunk. Well, at least you don't have that thick Vietnamese accent like my aunt's friend does." There's two asian races, Vietnamese and Japanese. 50% chance you'll be right.

I'm not from anywhere.

> Mostly Chicago, then five years of complicated.

"You sound like a chipmunk. I'm named after a chipmunk. Well, at least you don't have that thick Vietnamese accent like my aunt's friend does." There's two asian races, Vietnamese and Japanese. 50% chance you'll be right.

I'm not from anywhere.

"..Nowhere."
"That's nonsense. Everyone's from somewhere."
"Fine. I'm from Chicago and five years of everywhere else. You?"
"I'm from up by the Lakes. Not a town you've heard of, I bet."
"I thought you might be Vietnamese or something."
"Nope! A hundred-percent American here. My great-grandma was in World War 2, for your information."
You decide to let some of what you're thinking out. "You sound like a chipmunk." It's a bit cathartic.
"Well, you're named after one!" retorts Nene, still grinning. She apparently didn't take the insult all that seriously.
"I'm really not."

"Ahem." Lea interjects by clearing her throat. "You must be tired, right? I put the envelope with your keys and stuff in my room a couple of hours ago since we thought you might not arrive till tomorrow. All of the bedrooms are upstairs anyway." She is eager enough to defuse this non-situation that she takes your suitcase (which you had put down for the moment) and heads for the door on the opposite wall. You shrug and follow her through it.

Inside is a narrow stairwell. There are stairs going up and down, and Lea starts on the way up, holding your suitcase one-handed and using the left railing with the other. This might be a good time to get some more information about the school you'll be going to, or who lives here, or anything really.

>

SpoilerShow

Squeezing in one more update before I have way too much to do for an entire week or so.

> "Please don't touch my stuff. I can carry it myself."
> "How easy are the classes here?"
> "Are there any cliques I have to watch out for?"
> "Do they allow bathroom breaks?"

Who do I have to avoid?

> Just go up and go to bed. You can learn more tomorrow.

> "Please don't touch my stuff. I can carry it myself."
> "How easy are the classes here?"
> "Are there any cliques I have to watch out for?"
> "Do they allow bathroom breaks?"

Who do I have to avoid?

> Just go up and go to bed. You can learn more tomorrow.

"Could I have my suitcase back?" you say, giving your voice a touch of irritation.
"Oh, sorry." Lea halfway turns around and offers it to you. You have to take it with both hands and lower it back to the floor before you can continue on the way up. What, nothing about having only wanted to help?

"What are the classes like at this place?" you ask.
"Uh..well, pretty normal." She's distracted. "I mean, there are a lot more of the harder advanced classes than a public school but the regular classes aren't any harder." You've pulled her away from thinking about something else.
"Anyone I need to look out for?"
"Mnn..not really. I mean, Wisteria basically only has two kinds of kids: rich enough to afford it, and 'gifted' enough to have a scholarship." She says this as if she doesn't belong to either category. "So there's not really any major bullies. If someone does try to make trouble, I can handle it." Her tone of voice suggests she intends to 'handle it' personally.

You make it to the second floor, and Lea opens the door into a hallway. "So, second floor is us girls, you're on the third floor with Marc." (Marcus, you guess) "Nene was the first one here and got to decide that, sorry." There are three doors on each side, spaced about evenly, and another door at the opposite end. Lea heads for the first door on the right, producing a key from her pocket and unlocking it.
What you can see of her room from out in the hallway is her desk, which she heads toward and opens the drawer of, and the wall behind it, which has a few black-and-white posters on it. They look like prints of old movie posters or something, with titles like The Shadow, Captain Midnight, and...well, okay, you recognize Zorro at least, but not this incarnation of him.

"Here we go." Lea comes back out and hands you an envelope which clearly contains a couple of keys. "Marcus is probably asleep by now, so try to be quiet. The bathroom's at the end of the hall. Uh..." She seems reluctant to mention this. "If there's anything, weird, in your room, let me know."

>

So? Anything weird?

Is weird a, uh, trend around here?

> Wash up first, before heading to bed quietly.

So? Anything weird?

Is weird a, uh, trend around here?

> Wash up first, before heading to bed quietly.

You give her a bit of a look. "Is weird a trend around here?"
"Err." She takes a second or two to recover. "Well, it's just, they supposedly cleaned this place out at the end of last semester, but Nene's room had some water damage, my room was dirty, uh..Marc found some used fireworks, I think." The pause was long enough for you to suspect she was biting back a different answer, but what exactly it would be you're not sure. "So if you find something like that, I can be a witness that it started that way so they won't blame you for it."
"Okay." You nod and head back to the stairwell, going up to the third floor.

The envelope contains a few rules-and-regulations forms you'll look at later, and two keys with masking tape on them that say "OUT" and "BED". After some trial and error, your room is the first one on the right.

Your room is fairly basic: There's a bed, a dresser and a tiny closet, and a computer desk with a couple of drawers. Your room has a small window looking out on the glorious view of the next-door building's walls. There's also a large empty cardboard box stuck into an otherwise unused corner of the room. You guess this qualifies as something a little unusual, but it hardly seems like a big deal.

The top drawer of the dresser has some provided sheets and a blanket in it, all under a dust cover of loose plastic. You throw them unceremoniously onto the bed and go to the bathroom for a quick and uneventful shower before getting into bed. It's...not the worst bed you've tried to sleep on.

We only have a week!

End 0

Please...!

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1: Enveil'd

{Day 1: Friday, April 3}

You jerk awake at a persistent rapping on the door. "Hey, Alvin! Alviiiin! Wake up or you'll miss breakfast!" Nene.

The sun isn't out, which this deep into spring means it is definitely too early.

>

Kill her.

>Just five more minutes two more hours.
>Get breakfast if she insists.

Aaand we are past the point where this thread ended on mspaf! Well, maybe not in number of updates; the door was blocked from the inside by cardboard stapled to the wall. Lea kicked it open and they were confused about how the perpetrator could have gotten out of the room. Day 1 was not reached. Shame about last time, and surprising for an author as good as you, Xindaris.

Edit: >Breakfast = break the fast. Whenever you next eat is breakfast, by definition.

> There's no way you'd miss breakfast. And by that, I mean, you can sleep as much as you want without missing it so get some more shut eye. Besides, you arrived really late last night, what are they gonna do?