INTRO MINGLE

[dormheads]

week zero: mingle

remaining students: forty-two.

A buzzing alarm wakes you bright and early. You blink your eyes blearily, greeted by the sun's rays peeking through the blinds of a window. It's 7 AM, and it feels like you definitely went to bed way too late last night. Oh well, up and at 'em! Time to start your day! Except...

...this place looks unfamiliar. You're in a room with other people who are also waking up. Outside of the window is a large, sprawling school campus touched by the start of warm autumn colors. In the bathroom is--wow, another door through which are two more confused people in a similar room. Suite mates! In addition, if you go exploring within your dorm, you may find special access to a certain room. Though as you wander about, make sure you take a glance at the rules that are posted at each building.

Welcome to Wiwaldi Academy!

Outside on campus, the air is crisp. In the morning, your feet will crunch over a light frost and fallen leaves. The rest of the day is mild, but sweater and jackets may be needed in the evening and during the night. The sky is bright blue and empty except for an occasional stray cirrus cloud or two. It seems like fall is on the horizon.

🦋 ☀️ 🍁 ❄️

In each room, students will find their own laptops with a welcome screen:

Thank you for joining us at the beautiful campus of Wiwaldi Academy! All classes officially begin on Monday. Students are encouraged to enjoy leisure time on campus this weekend. Please be mindful as new additions to the campus are in construction, and these are off-limits to students until completion.

The icon in the top right corner corresponds to your dorm: Spring, Summer, Fall, or Winter. Even though you are all sorted by a particular dorm, please don't hesitate to meet and mingle with one another! You all will have plenty of opportunity to do so on Saturday during the Sundae Orientation. An ice cream bar will be on the campus lawn between the dormitory buildings from 12PM onward, and everyone is invited to come meet and mingle while playing introductory games.

Don't forget to think about your EXTRA CREDIT! It's a chance for you to get ahead on your work. You wouldn't want anyone else stealing your extra credit for themselves, so keep all extra credit assignments under lock and key.

From all of us here at Wiwaldi Academy, we wish you great success on your future endeavors!

Signed,
Principal Bear

Near their desk is a backpack filled with the following:

- an acceptance letter (the envelope is clickable)
- school supplies (notebook, pen, highlighter, binder)
- a framed photograph of a man and his dog
- a smartphone
- a school jacket
- a personalized mug
- a little pack of konpeito
- a cashmere scarf
- one (1) voucher

On their smartphone, they'll find an email with the subject Extra Credit Assignment. The contents of the email provide the details of said assignment.

🦋 ☀️ 🍁 ❄️

Welcome to the Intro Mingle and the start of our game, everyone! Feel free to use the Saturday orientation as prompts for your top-levels. If you have any questions, you may use the Discord #questions-for-mods channel, or DM your mods (Dana, Francy, Anna, and Jan) directly. If you don't have all of us added, just let one of us know, and we'll create the mod DM for you.

A friendly reminder is that IC Profiles are not ICly unlocked yet. Please also stay tuned for Something Else on Sunday at 12 PM / 3 PM EST.

main navigation.
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Comments

[illuminance]

There are different kinds?

[ how do you make them do things if you can't touch the screen... ]

[goalsides]

Yeah. The kind we have fold in half, so you have to open them to get to the buttons to do anything. I don't really use mine that much though.

[but now he has this and admittedly it's very fascinating.]

[illuminance]

[ she looks down at her phone, squinting at it and trying to imagine it but foldable. ]

I guess that would make them easier to carry with you...

[goalsides]

Or just put it in your pocket. [taichi is unaware that womens clothing usually lacks pockets no matter what.]

If they gave all of us phones, they probably want a way to contact all of us at the same time and make it easier for us to message each other. Seems kinda weird if we're supposed to be at war or whatever.

[illuminance]

[ lux, wearing only armor over a skin-tight bodysuit: wtf are pockets... ]

... I wish they would hurry up and contact us, then, if that's what they gave them to us for.

[goalsides]

[there's a noise of agreement and also annoyance.]

I dunno. The last time this happened we didn't get answers for like a few weeks or something. [more...less...time was really weird and he has a general sense of it but not much.] But if classes start Monday they have to contact us before then.

[illuminance]

You've been through something like this before?

[goalsides]

Not the dorm war part, no. That one's new. But this isn't the first world I've been to without warning and without knowing why.

[illuminance]

[ is this just a thing that happens to people... ]

May I ask what happened last time?

[goalsides]

[well. about that.]

It's a pretty long story...[and also not really one he wants to go into right now!] But we got back home in the end.

[illuminance]

[ she doesn't mind. ]

Then we'll just have to hope this venture ends the same way!

[goalsides]

Yeah. It has to. [he refuses any other option. but...that line of thought is depressing, so he looks at lux's phone again.]

I can show you how to text if you want. Just to be ready for whenever they send their first message.

[illuminance]

That would be wonderful! I'd hate to be caught unprepared.

[goalsides]

[he nods because yeah, same. normally he doesn't mind not planning that far ahead, but things are different already. give him a sec to reach into his pocket and pull out his own phone, turning the screen to show her as he points to the messaging app.]

You want to go here. [and he's going through the motions as he explains. is this partially also to help him remember how to do this after pushing buttons and stumbling into the right answer? maybe.] And then you can put in the name of a person you're gonna to send a message to.

[and because this is an example, he does start to type in yamato's name because he figures it's easiest. according to the mods, this means the name autocompletes to send to the right person.] After you pick who you're sending it to, you can write whatever you want here and hit send.

[everyone should be proud he figured out this part.]

[illuminance]

[ she is following along with the steps he's taking. a bit slower than him because touch screens are just not intuitive to her. why would you press on a flat thing... that's not how buttons work...

she also types in yamato's name! which means taichi can probably read that she A) has a message from yamato that says that he found taichi. and B) that she very slowly and carefully types out: I learned how to send a message. and sends that to him.

they're already buddies. somehow??? ]

[goalsides]

[no judgment from here it took him a while to get used to being more gentle with touch screens. but he's watching and there's a little bit of surprise when he notices she's using yamato's name, too. and also that there's a message from yamato?

actually, yeah, it's the latter that's mostly surprising but also not. he figures he does not have to clarify he's taichi, maybe, and instead watches lux send the message.]

There you go. Pretty easy, right?

[and time-consuming but whatever.]

[illuminance]

[ he probably should because she does not realize that he's taichi. but it's fine. ]

Somewhat. It's very... [ convenient? useful? ] Like magic.

[goalsides]

[and she won't because that would require taichi to think ahead.]

It gets easier, but yeah. I guess it is a little like magic. Normally you can make phone calls and hear the other person and talk to them, but calling doesn't work on these. So texts it is.

[vaguely annoying when he's faster with phone calls but whatever.]

[illuminance]

[ you know what, she kind of gets the concept of magic moving letters quickly, but? calls?? HUH. ]

That's even harder to imagine.

[goalsides]

Would you believe me if I said phones used to only be able to make calls? Texts and emails are new.

[illuminance]

That seems backwards.

[goalsides]

Totally true though. Phones didn't always know how to take pictures either. But it's kind of nice to have everything in one, so...[he will take a free phone with a healthy amount of suspicion.]

[illuminance]

It's strange to think that - not only does this place have such things... But others brought here are familiar with them. We must really come from such different places.

[goalsides]

Yeah. I've already lost track of how many different worlds I've heard about already, but even the people that come from a world I've heard of have some differences. A lot of us aren't just from different places, but different times.

But Yamato and I are from the same time and place, so there's that, too. [i.e. he doesn't fucking know, @ principal bear please explain why they're all here.]

[illuminance]

Ah.

[ okay NOW she gets that he's taichi. we got there! ]

I'm glad that some of us, at least, have a friend with us.