Evan was never a particularly strong or confident guy, and both of those facts were blatantly obvious in spite of his attempt to avoid being noticed. If anything, it made everything worse. Nobody in the crowd said anything to him, but a lot of people took subconscious mental notice of that even if they didn't realize it. Some of the newcomers didn't get the most preferable reception.

Some in the crowd saw Mag in her uniform, and wondered if she would rat the island out to a foreign government. "Oh God, what are the Russians doing here?"
There were a few snickers throughout the crowd as Danny stumbled. Even a few from the helicopter couldn't help but chuckle. Ursula, like Evan, failed in her attempt to avoid notice. A group of boys were looking at her and laughing among themselves.

But when Clover and William stepped off it was a different story. Much of the crowd was too nervous to even look at William, thinking he must be one of the ranked individuals running the operation. Both the young men and women outside the school couldn't help but look upon Clover's beauty with desire and reverence.

"This should help ease any doubts of our legitimacy. Anyone coming here from school might feel right at home." Dr Clementine said "Let's get those keys."

When they entered the building was when they first saw the mercenaries. The recruiters had told Evan and several others about unrivaled technological advancements, but this seemed unreal. Two men stood at the entrance and Evan spotted one patrolling the halls. All of them were clad in fitted black power armor. It covered the mercenaries head to toe. On the helmet was a single slit that glowed red. Each mercenary held rifles which Evan didn't recognize.

"You shouldn't have too much trouble with these guys around." Dr Clementine said, pointing at the mercenaries.

Then they were lead to a desk where they were each given their room numbers and a key. The dorm rooms held two bunk beds and held four people. Evan, Danny, William, and "Mr Collins," who Evan learned was actually named Gary Collins, were placed in room 208. Ursula, Mag, and Clover were placed in room 104 with a girl named Ruth. The dorm was a single building, but men and women were put in rooms at the opposite sides of the building.

It was only when the crowd started acting nervous about him that William finally acknowledged their presence with some slightly confused side eye. 'What is up with those guys?' William thought to himself as he whistled on by.

Upon arrival at room 208, William gave a cry of "I call dibs on the top left bunk!" before setting his stuff down in whatever space was prepared to receive it and climbing up to take his place on the topmost bunk of the left hand bed.

"Hi," Mags said to Ruth as she entered Room 104, taking a good look at her. "I'm Magdalene Vulpe, but everyone calls me 'Mags'. Which bed is yours?"

If they were available, the other two women were likely to want top bunks. She was fine with a bottom bunk, but she wanted curtains for a bit of personal privacy - assuming she could rustle up a lamp from somewhere. Or curtains. Mags glanced around the room, noting the bunkbeds but no other furniture or decorations, just bare walls.

Talk about a depressing place, she thought. The ex-sergeant put her duffle down at the foot of the nearest set of beds.

"Wow, this looks like my old barracks room," Mags said with a sigh. "What's the situation here for closets? Or furniture?"

"What's this place like? Anything going on after dark?"

"You shouldn't have too much trouble with these guys around." "Yeah right, they are probably here to make sure we don't CAUSE any trouble." Danny made sure not to say that out loud, he didn't want anymore attention on him after all. He just followed Clementine and the others to his new room without saying anything, instead focusing on memorizing the route.

He was surprised to learn that he had to share a room, having figured that there weren't enough students to make it necessary but he wasn't going to complain. At least they got beds, that was an improvement over some of the sleeping arrangements he had had.

"I call dibs on the top left bunk!" One of his new roommates immediately picked his spot and Danny could respect him for knowing what he wanted and taking it. Following William's lead he sat down on the bed closest to him, the lower left one. "Guess this one is mine then."

"Hi Mags, I'm Ruth." Ruth said to Mags, offering a handshake "I don't think the bunk beds are assigned. I could be wrong. Let see" She looked at the paper listing what room she goes to and with whom. She flipped it over, and there were rules listed on the back.

1. You will be provided necessities for both your studies and basic living. Do not touch, tamper with, or take anything that is not provided to you. Theft will violate your contract and will come with severe consequences.

2. Please attend all classes and activities you are instructed to by your Director (Dr. Clementine) or their Assistant Director (L.T. Graham.) Failure to adequately participate in the program is a violation of your contract.

3. You will be instructed to participate in classes involving controlled sparring. Any act of violence against either the instructors, Maniacles personnel, or fellow subjects is a violation against your contract and will warrant severe consequences. If you are unable to participate in sparring classes for an acceptable reason, accomodations may be granted.

4. Due to the size and limited capacity of the dorm building, men and women are separated to opposite side of the building. Please do not go to the dorm area intended for the opposite sex. You may interact in the lobby, lounge, and dining areas on the ground floor of the dorms.

5. Please maintain a clean dorm room. Wood can warp or rot if left wet, and even Alaska has pests that can be attracted by food left out. Cleaning costs, pest control costs, or repair costs will be deducted from the pay listed in your contract.

6. Please comply with orders of mercenaries working for Maniacles Corporation. They are here to keep peace and order.

7. Do not leave the campus unless instructed to by the Director (Dr Clementine) or the Assistant Director (L.T. Graham.) If an instructor wants to take you off the campus, make sure he has either verbal permission or a signed letter of authorization. Do not interact with the locals who live in the town. Leaving the campus violates your contract, and going into the town comes with severe consequences which may include voiding your contract.

"Well... okay." Ruth chuckled nervously "It looks like we can choose our own bed." She looked over at the bunk beds where the comforter for each bed were faded, and one mattress looked like someone already took a knife and slashed through the sheet and into the mattress.

On the opposite side of the building, Evan read the same rules as one too bunk was taken by William, and the two bottom bunks were taken by Danny and Gary. Not that Evan minded the top bunk, but the way Gary just went right for the other bottom bunk without saying anything rubbed him the wrong way. The room was disappointing, but the lobby seemed cozy, in a bed and breakfast kind of way.

"Well this is lame." Gary blurted out "Why don't we check out the lounge? Maybe they got a pool table."

"Well... okay." Ruth chuckled nervously "It looks like we can choose our own bed." She looked over at the bunk beds where the comforter for each bed were faded, and one mattress looked like someone already took a knife and slashed through the sheet and into the mattress.

"But are the beds provided?" Mags asks quietly, glancing around, feeling the barracks lawyer in her rising up. "I hate to say this, but it sound like we need permission for everything. They gave us a room, but I don't remember anyone telling us they were providing beds, much less mattress, sheets, or blankets. And that one's ripped. If they are providing beds, why give us a ripped mattress?"

The soldier sighs, then kneels down to adjust her duffle. "Pity, I was really hoping to sleep in a bed tonight."

Mags glances up, to see how the others were taking it.

@Expendable Ruth paused, looked at the bunk bed, then back at Mags.

"Uh, I think it's pretty heavily implied the beds are being provided. Like...if it's our dorm room, sleeping on the beds is a given."

She walked over to the bed that looked like it had been slashed.

"We should make sure to lock the door though."

1. You will be provided necessities for both your studies and basic living. Do not touch, tamper with, or take anything that is not provided to you. Theft will violate your contract and will come with severe consequences.

"You hear that down there, Jason Todd? No stealing the tyres off the Maniaclesmobile now." William reacted to the first rule with a playful jab at the occupant of the bunk below him.

2. Please attend all classes and activities you are instructed to by your Director (Dr. Clementine) or their Assistant Director (L.T. Graham.) Failure to adequately participate in the program is a violation of your contract.

"Oh dear god." William reacted to the second rule with a tone of mock horror. "I got so caught up in the magic part of this gig that I forgot this was also... a school! Nooooooooo!"

3. You will be instructed to participate in classes involving controlled sparring. Any act of violence against either the instructors, Maniacles personnel, or fellow subjects is a violation against your contract and will warrant severe consequences. If you are unable to participate in sparring classes for an acceptable reason, accomodations may be granted.

"No running fade without adult supervision." William summarized the third rule. "Understandable."

4. Due to the size and limited capacity of the dorm building, men and women are separated to opposite side of the building. Please do not go to the dorm area intended for the opposite sex. You may interact in the lobby, lounge, and dining areas on the ground floor of the dorms.

"No foxes in the chicken coop at any time." William summarized the fourth rule. "Again, understandable."

5. Please maintain a clean dorm room. Wood can warp or rot if left wet, and even Alaska has pests that can be attracted by food left out. Cleaning costs, pest control costs, or repair costs will be deducted from the pay listed in your contract.

"Don't turn your room into a slovenly goblin lair." William summarized the fifth rule. "Once more with feeling, understandable."

6. Please comply with orders of mercenaries working for Maniacles Corporation. They are here to keep peace and order.

"They didn't need to make an entire rule for that." William said in response to the sixth rule. "I'm in no hurry to say no to an armed man."

7. Do not leave the campus unless instructed to by the Director (Dr Clementine) or the Assistant Director (L.T. Graham.) If an instructor wants to take you off the campus, make sure he has either verbal permission or a signed letter of authorization. Do not interact with the locals who live in the town. Leaving the campus violates your contract, and going into the town comes with severe consequences which may include voiding your contract.

"Now that one I'm not quite so understanding of." William responded to the seventh and final rule. "They don't want us going into town? I'll definitely be asking about that later."

"Well this is lame." Gary blurted out soon after the rules were read. "Why don't we check out the lounge? Maybe they got a pool table."

"Yeah, I can dig that." William said as he descended from his bunk. "Let's go see what this place has to offer."

@Expendable Ruth paused, looked at the bunk bed, then back at Mags.

"Uh, I think it's pretty heavily implied the beds are being provided. Like...if it's our dorm room, sleeping on the beds is a given."

She walked over to the bed that looked like it had been slashed.

"We should make sure to lock the door though."

"The door is a physical part of the room," Mags agrees with a sigh. "But these rules are weird. It's like they're trying to trick us into breaking them so they don't have to honor their contract. Rule seven basically says we can't imply an instructor wanting to take us off campus has permission to do so - we, the students, have to check and make sure."

The ex-sergeant shakes her head, her brow furling as she frowns. "But why is that? We're on an isolated island just off of Alaska - that town below is probably full of employees and their families, who else would want to live here? And where are the mercenaries sleeping? Here in the dorms with us? Or down in town?"

And why were there mercinaries here? she wondered. Are there pirate raids or something?

"Anyway," Mags says, heading towards the door. "I'm going to go find someone to ask and make sure we can use these beds, maybe get a new mattress since that one's ripped. It'll give me a chance to explore."

"You hear that down there, Jason Todd? No stealing the tyres off the Maniaclesmobile now." "Great, and here I was thinking it would be a great idea to steal great big tires I wouldn't be able to hide out from under the noses of armed mercenaries." Danny quipped back, not really minding the Jason Todd remark.

Honestly most the rules made enough sense but he did agree that #6 and #7 were weird. "I already didn't exactly trust this place but those last two rules aren't helping me give it the benefit of the doubt." Still Danny wasn't planning on going all paranoid and just locking himself in the dorm all day so when the offer to check out the lounge and maybe play some pool was made he accepted. "I'm more of an air hockey guy myself, but sure I'm in."

@Expendable "Come on, that's nonsense!" Ruth sat on the bed with the slash "Though I wonder what these 'severe consequences' are. Voiding the contract is only mentioned once."

Ruth skimmed the rules again.

"It says we can go to the lounge, the lobby, and the dining area. I'm going to go look around." Ruth said, trying to remain upbeat.

@Duthguy@rush99999

"I'm in." Evan said, as he folded up the paper and put it in his pocket.

Both the men's dorms and the women's dorms were hallways at the opposite side of the building. In between was a lobby with hardwood floors darkened with time and neglect, which creaked no matter where you stepped. Both cobwebs and spider webs could be found in corners high and low. The central heater, a newer addition than the flooring but older than the rotary phone sitting on the desk, gasped loudly from the vents. There was a front desk which lay empty, and a couple ripped, mildewy old couches. A stone fire place sat in one corner. There was a hallway, which Evan assumed lead to the dining area, and a door with a window through which Evan spotted a ping pong table. As abandoned as the place looked like it should be, the place was bustling with students. Despite how few students there were, the dorm building was small enough to be congested. Evan did his best not to bump into anyone.

"First it says we can't go into town, now we're limited to where we can go in the dorms as well?" Mags scowls, following Ruth out the door. "Should I be worried nobody mentioned we can use the bathroom?"

There were more people in the hallway now, which made her quirk her eyebrow, especially in the lobby. A couple of the guys who rode in the copter was here, looking a little lost and curious, themselves. She gave them a quick nod, then decided to cross over to the front desk.

"Hello?" she called out, hoping someone who worked for the school would appear behind the desk, then eyed the phone on the desk. With a shrug, she picks up the handset and listens for a dial tone, then tries calling "Oh for the Operator".

@Expendable The phone Mags picked up was a grey landline phone with a spiral cord. Some would consider this an 'ancient relic.' Despite Mag's effort to get ahold of an operator, she heard only relentless high pitched beeps. From the looks of the school, and the village leading up to it, one couldn't be faulted for thinking this was the most advanced technology on the island.

"Hey, whatsup?" Gary asked Mags "Want to play some ping pong with us? There's a lounge in there." He said, pointing towards the glass door to the lounge.

William had already made his way over to the ping pong table. And while he waited for a game to begin, he had begun absentmindedly juggling eight ping pong balls while whistling a merry rendition of The Circus Bee.

Danny looked for stuff like camera's while on the way to the lobby but all he noticed was cobwebs and outdated furniture. At least there seemed to some form of central heating. He felt like it wouldn't be fun time in the middle of nowhere, Alaska without it and hoped that despite the noises it made the heater would stay working. "Really looks like they spared every expense."

He was so focused on finding anything suspicious that he didn't even realize how crowded the lobby was until Gary asked a girl if she wanted to play ping pong. Not really knowing what else to do Danny headed to the ping pong table where William was killing time by juggling some of the balls. "You juggle often?"

"You juggle often?"

William stopped whistling and turned his head towards Danny to reply, his lack of focus on juggling the ping pong balls not hampering his ability to do so in the slightest. "Not as often as the juggler I used to travel with." William said. "But often enough that I can handle juggling half as much as he was able to on a good day." William then threw all eight ping pong balls high into the air, giving him a moment to gesture around at the low quality elements of the lounge. "Y'know, with Maniacles being one of the richest companies in the world, you'd think they'd have enough cash to not have this place looking like a spider infested relic of the olden days." William said before catching all eight ping pong balls as they finally came back down, all while speaking to Danny with all the casual calm of someone who wasn't really doing anything out of the ordinary. "I mean, I get that there are probably higher priorities in the budget that keeping the place looking nice, but that does that really mean they needed to let it get this bad?" William then turned his head back to the ping pong balls he was juggling. "At least they had the scratch to give us something to amuse ourselves with though."

"That's corporate greed for you." Evan said, watching William juggle "Why spend money to update a dorm building when that money can go to the executives and shareholders?" Evan was slightly bitter about his situation back home and jobs he worked to keep everything afloat. He felt guilty, but he was looking forward to not having to deal work at some fast food place or grocery store. Not that this was too lavish of a vacation, but it was a much needed break.

People closer to the front door could slightly hear an argument coming from outside. Mainly a shrill feminine voice yelling at someone, but whoever she was arguing with wasn't loud enough to hear.

"I was given special privileges your stupid company worked out with the council! It doesn't expire!"

After a few minutes, a mercenary in that black armor and glowing red visor walked in, and behind him, a young woman. She wore a short, black dress, black makeup, and black goth heels. Her hair was light blonde and had curls at the ends. She seemed college aged. Most of the male students immediately looked over at her. Even Gary turned his attention away from Mags.

The woman's smile didn't match what Evan quite imagined when he heard the yelling through the door.

"Hello, can I get everyone's attention?" She called out, though she didn't need to say that for too many of the guys "My name is Meagan, I'm actually a graduate of the academy. You might have noticed what looked like a massive cathedral as you flew over the town. That's actually the Church of the Ascendant. You've probably been told not to leave the campus, but they're allowing some members to come here and talk about the Church." She held up a stack of pink sheets of paper "So if anyone is interested, we meet here every Friday. Please take a flier, it's information and an invitation"

Male students rushed over to grab a flier, some of the girls followed. Evan decided to get one just out of curiosity. The flier read:

Every Friday
8pm
In the first basement auditorium
Learn about where it all came from

"Where it all came from?" Evan mumbled to himself.

At the first sign of a commotion, William caught all of the ping pong balls he was juggling and set them down on the table. "What's this now?" William asked no one in particular as he put a hand to his ear.

"I was given special privileges your stupid company worked out with the council! It doesn't expire!"

"It seems Maniacles is having some trouble keeping its end of a bargain..." William said, once again to no one in particular. "Between this its stinginess towards interior decorating, I fear for the sanctity of our own bargains with the company."

A few minutes later, William found himself arching an eyebrow at the arrival of a religious goth girl. Though he was drawn to her as much as the rest of the male student body were, William refused to let that attraction have any power over him. He'd seen all the problems that sort of thing could cause and he wanted none of that.

Even so he was curious enough to take a flier of his own as well.

"Every Friday at 8pm." William said to himself as he returned to the ping pong table to read the flier. "And with today being a Saturday, we arrived a day late for the latest session. Just our luck."

Getting out of the cold was refreshing, even in the helicopter they the cold crept in, but the constant groan of the heating system was a constant reminder of the ever-present threat of the Arctic outside. A reminder that nature was inevitable, and even machines degraded and withered with time. Ursula moved along with the others without much fanfare, mostly just glad to get away from the judgmental stares of the students.

Once they were shown their dorms, Ursula remained silent as the other girls spoke up. She was far more occupied, grabbing out her sketch pad and a set of charcoal pencils. She had hoped to capture the moment outside, above the arctic ocean, the tiny village, and the intimidating compound on the horizon. Already she could feel that image fading in her mind, and in her fever she utterly ignored the introductions, or at least seemed to as she remained iron set on the bag.

It seemed one of the other girls was particularly pedantic; that was the word that Ursula decided sounded most accurate. Her concerns were certainly understandable given the situation. Cult was not the word she would use, but neither was corporation. This room felt like an asylum to her, like a room with any real hazards removed, just missing the grippy socks. The other girl, Mags, as she called herself, offhandedly called it a ‘barracks’. With more and more of her attention focusing less on her art and more on the present company, she found herself absent-mindedly scribbling out drawings of the women in the room. [url=http://]Scribbles[/url] was certainly what she would call it. She was rusty after all.

Once Mags left the room, defiantly, Ursula flopped back onto the bottom bunk, finally turning her face away from her drawing once she was thoroughly frustrated with her lack of muse. She turned to Ruth with a wry grin.

“I’m Ursula, by the way,” She added, before turning her attention back to her sketches for a moment longer, trying in vain to get Mag’s sloping forehead right. Her attention only shifted when shouting from outside occurred. Curious, she peered her head out the door to see a new lady, someone who wasn’t on the helicopter. The woman stood out because, unlike anyone she had seen so far, she was smiling. Her smile made Ursula frown, and her clearly rehearsed speech made her scowl.

She patiently waited for the lady to leave; only then did she make her way out of the dorm room, giving a wave to Ruth as she did. Scanning the area, she saw a few of her fellow freshmen by a table tennis, well, table, and waved to them pensively, hoping to get a read on their willingness to speak with her.

"Hey, whatsup?" Gary asked Mags "Want to play some ping pong with us? There's a lounge in there." He said, pointing towards the glass door to the lounge.

Mags turns and stares intently at Gary for a long moment, then shakes her head. "Sorry, too many questions in my head right now, like where to find a replacement mattress, cleaning supplies, and fresh bedding, it's one of the perils of being a sergeant. But this is our new roommate, Ruth. She's a student here, too. Ruth, this is..."

She frowns, shaking her head, "I'm sorry, I know you were on the helicopter, but I don't know anyone's names. I'm Magdalene Vulpe, but everyone just calls me 'Mags'."