post-grad ayako on the dream smp
Permalink

Ayako graduates.

There are details; there are compacts and negotiations, alliances and allies; there are plans and the carrying out of plans. But she leads Kyoto, with one of the juniors acting as second in command, throughout her senior year, and she tutors her underclassmen in politics and poetry-writing and makes sure that the younger alchemists learn how to make Adderall, and when graduation rolls around she leaves the enclave in Asami's capable hands and she hugs her sophomores and freshmen and she graduates with a team by her side-- gets all but one of them out-- and when she gets through the gates and falls back home she collapses not into her parents' arms but into Hitomi's.

They have healers waiting. Despite how extensive her burns are, it's barely a week of recuperation before it looks like she'd never been injured. Rin and Hitomi hover, a little bit; it feels strange to have people hovering, after spending a year the head of Kyoto, but not unwelcome.

Haruto died, Rin tells her gently, when she's okay enough to be walking around again and asks to see him. That year's freshmen hadn't come in with the news, it hadn't been in the graduation hall, he'd bled out on the Kyoto floor before the healing could kick in, and then the next year it hadn't parsed as news anymore and they'd forgotten it needed to be sent. Rin apologizes and Ayako tells her it's okay, it isn't anyone's fault, and means it, but. It's been a long time since Ayako grieved and she's not sure she remembers how, if she ever knew.

She learns how to use a computer. She'd never touched one before the scholomance-- some enclaves do that on purpose, to make sure their kids aren't stranded without a phone when they get in; in Kyoto they just hadn't had time-- and the keyboard layout is nonsensical but she figures it out, at this point she's spell-competent in seven languages with four different alphabets and she can apply herself to a nonsensical letter layout. She emails Sebastian's parents to tell them that their son is dead, not for lack of skill or lack of allies but just for lack of luck, and that he'll be grieved by those who stood with him, even though she's not totally sure she knows how to shape herself so that it's true.

And then.... nothing happens.

Usually there'd be an endless stream of classes and homework and projects and negotiations and graduation planning and tutoring her underclassmen and politics and trying to keep yourself sane and human and not burn out. And instead, nothing happens. Her graduation allies' contracts with Kyoto to be sponsored into other enclaves are being handled by the adults whose job it is to handle that. Her underclassmen are still in the Scholomance.

She tries auditing a university class, just to have something to do, but it feels like being surrounded by aliens, all of these people who think using a cell phone comes as naturally as breathing and are surprised when it doesn't to her and who don't bother to scan rooms before they sit down. The classwork moves at what feels like a snail's pace, after Scholomance classes where she was writing a paper almost every day, which might in a different world be nice but in this one means she's not even getting the thing she was after. Twice she has to lie about having been raised in a cult to cover up the fact that she barely knows what the internet is. Someone asks her if she knows how intimidating she is and-- she supposes she is intimidating, when she thinks about it. Her underclassmen hadn't thought so but maybe her peers had? Or maybe that's the strangeness, that nobody out here carries themself like a soldier.

So she stops taking that class. She'd met people from it, had offered to meet up with a few of them in coffee shops to study, but they don't keep in touch. Instead she wanders around Kyoto, sees all the things she'd been too busy to see when she was younger, reminds herself firmly and constantly that the crowds are protective, except then someone tries to grope her on a train and before she can stop to think about it he's on the floor and she's not even out of breath and everyone is staring at her, like she's the alien, like she's the one who doesn't make any sense. Someone makes noises about the police but she's out the door at the next stop and running.

Ayako stays in the enclave after that, mostly. It doesn't help with feeling like she's supposed to be doing something but at least she isn't trying to live in a world where she's supposed to have spent her teenage years doing-- whatever it is teenage girls do when they aren't in the scholomance.

Until--

Total: 88
Posts Per Page:
Permalink

She lands in a forest. There are cobblestone-and-wood walls and some strange red on-fire substance scattered around. (It's not a very good wall; with some jumping around she could get over it, and if she looks around, there's a hole in it.)

Her phone buzzes. She is, apparently, now in a group chat.

<Purpled> yooo

<Tubbo_> o/

<HBomb94> WELCOME

Permalink

<Ayako> Hi???

<Ayako> Whst just happenwd

Permalink

Before she gets an answer, someone stabs her from behind with a trident.

She wakes up in the same place, totally fine and intact. The stabbing barely even hurt. The person who did it is walking away; he's got black hair, white goggles, and blue-white armor. There's a nameplate over his head, labeling him GeorgeNotFound. Her phone has new messages.

Ayako was slain by GeorgeNotFound using [Try Dent]

<GeorgeNotFound> ez

<GeorgeNotFound> loser

<Ranboo> uhhhhhhh

<Ranboo> welcome to the dream smp

Permalink

FUCK she'd gotten used to not having to scan constantly apparently and--

Okay. Okay she can unlearn that and get back in the habit stop panicking STOP freaking out that's not adaptive it never has been it never will be and it especially will not be when there are people who will just fucking sTAB YOU-- no stop that's freaking out again--

She doesn't see the message from Ranboo for a few minutes because she's scanning the forest for movement, or shapes that are moving towards her rather than away, and she would be listening for sounds that aren't supposed to be in a forest except she has no idea what sounds are supposed to be in a forest because she's never been in one before.

Permalink

Well. It is much sooner than a few minutes--twenty-three seconds exactly--before she hears someone coming up behind her; he's got glowing purple armor and a glowing purple sword. And the intent to stab her.

Permalink

Yep nope glowing purple is conspicuous as hell and she has her knives on her and she's very fast. The sword connects with air and then there's a knife in his side.

Permalink

....He stops attacking, puts his sword away in a flash, and throws his hands up in a gesture of surrender. "--Whoa, I wasn't going to actually--are you okay?"

Permalink

NO I'M NOT OKAY SOMEONE JUST FUCKING STABBED ME WHERE EVEN AM I WHAT IS HAPPENING WHY DO PEOPLE KEEP MURDERING ME AND EXPECTING THAT TO BE FINE WHAT IS WRONG WITH THIS PLACE, except that even through a full-on shaking-and-hyperventilating panic attack Ayako has more diplomatic training than that, and instead what she says (without pausing to think about it; still shaking and hyperventilating) is "I'm fine. What, what was the meaning of that." 

Permalink

"Hey, hey, it's okay. Take a deep breath. It was just--it was just a joke, but you're clearly having a rough time right now, so. I'm going to take out my phone now, okay? I'm going to tell everyone not to hurt you." He talks slowly and calmly; he moves slowly and telegraphs his movements clearly when taking out his phone. "If you care a lot about not getting hurt we should probably head towards civilization and set you up with some torches. Phil might be able to help some, but we're, um, we're not on the best of terms right now, so I probably shouldn't be the one to ask him."

(Her phone buzzes some more.)

Permalink

Why's he talking like she's a scared kid-- the shaking is going down and she's, she's fine, lapses of judgement aside-- who the fuck stabs people as a joke-- 

"I. Am pretty sure I care the normal amount about not getting murdered?" 

Permalink

“It wasn’t canon, I wasn’t going to—murder you for real, you would have just. Respawned. Are you okay?”

Permalink

"I'm fine." It's even true, or mostly true, or not true at all but she's fine enough to function without doing stupid things that make her worse off if someone else decides to kill her, by now, which is close enough to being true that it counts. She still doesn't quite feel like she's getting enough air? But it's fine enough to count.

"I-- am used to a state of affairs in which death is always for real." 

Permalink

Sam doesn’t comment on her hyperventilation, but he still looks worried. “That’s—not true here. I mean, George killed you, and here you are. It’s only canon if someone’s trying, nobody would do that on your first day when you haven’t done anything. And even then you get three canon lives. Unless you’re Phil, I guess.

If anyone kills you for real you can come to me and I can put them in prison.”

Permalink

Ayako had theoretically noticed that she hadn't died when killed but she'd been too busy panicking to actually process it. Which is deeply embarrassing but it's FINE she's FINE everything is FINE.

She casts around for a different topic and lands on "I guess that's not a weirder way to do things than any other. Prison, huh, that's.... new."

 

Also she finally looks at her phone.

Permalink

"Yeah, we're--trying it. It's--going well, mostly."

<awesamdude> don't kill the new girl unless you want it to be canon

<awesamdude> also i will kill you

<JackManifoldTV> awwwwww but i was on my way

<JackManifoldTV> i NEVER get to kill people

<JackManifoldTV> why does this always happen to me

<Ranboo> because you're jack manifold

<TommyInnit> imagine being jack manifold. L

<Michaelmcchill> no im the new person

Permalink

She hasn't known any of these people long enough to be thinking about alliances but as of right now Sam has risen several levels in her estimation of who her allies are or might be, and Jack Manifold has fallen but not quite as far as George.

<Ayako> I'm the new personn

<Ayako> Thank you Sam

"Cool that you're trying it."

Permalink

“…Thank you. I agree.”

<Michaelmcchill> :(

<TommyInnit> VC2

<TommyInnit> VC2

<TommyInnit> VC2

Permalink

"...unrelatedly, what does VC2 mean." 

Permalink

"It's--a voice chat, you can join it on your phone--you see the three bars at the top left corner, you tap those, and there should be a list of voice chats you can join. VC2 is usually Tommy's."

(The group chat operates similarly to the mobile discord app, if Ayako is familiar with that; there's a text channel and 10 voice channels.)

Permalink

Ayako is familiar with Google, Google Maps, texting, and her phone camera, and could figure out phone calls if she had to. She has never in her life used discord mobile or otherwise. She... tries joining VC2? 

Permalink

“HELLO?”

Permalink

“…Hi.”

Permalink

"Hi. I had never touched a phone in my life until a few months ago and I'm not sure how this works. I'm Ayako." 

Permalink

“Oh my God a new person! —Was that weird, am I being weird—I’m Tubbo, it’s cool meeting you.”

Permalink

“I’m Ranboo. The, uh, the loud one’s Tommy.”

Total: 88
Posts Per Page: