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This was quite the exciting circumstance he had been put in. Usually when he was blindfolded, he was also chained to a bed, with a little pressure on top of his body. Wax was optional, of course. However, in this instance, he was calmly listening to his favorite genre of music, Alternative Jazz. The flow of instruments, and competitive solos, really got his foot tapping against the floor of the helicopter. Honestly, even with this music soothing him, his nerves were still on the fritz. Being chosen for this once in a lifetime opportunity as a lowly Professor...was he even worthy of a spot here? After what felt like an eternity, his blindfold was taken off, and he placed the headphones around his neck. Sitting across from him was another man with fiery hair. "Alright, 'ere's de deal," The man said as he flipped a golden ring into the air. Maita desperately went to grab at it, but he failed as it ultimately landed in his lap. "Dis 'ere is a ring dat was owned by de great Iresh 'ero, Cu Chulainn. Wit any loehck, dat's who'll you'll get. We'd 'ave gahtten you de earrengs dat were used last time to soehmmahn 'im, but dat twet Bazzet lost dem, alahng wit 'er life. Be sure naht to lose dese, we'd like to soehmmahn 'im in ahther holy grail wars," He shrugged as he leaned back. "We dahn't know what class you'll get, I guess hope fahr Lancer," Maita prided himself on being fluent in English, but this accent was a bit much for him to ascertain. However, there was one clean word he could make out of the last bit. He held the ring in the air between the two, and looked through it and at the man. "Right! Lancer! Yeah!" He smiled. "Are there any drinks on this flight, by the way? I could use something to calm me down." Before long, the helicopter had landed. As they disembarked from the vehicle, they were greeted with the site of snow, and an old man. Maita stood amongst all the others, holding a wine glass in one hand, and the entire bottle in the other. "Welcome everyone, to Chaldea! Today marks the day where we take our first steps to protect the Human Order. Are you ready to take that journey with us?" Maita was about to respond with vigor, before the man abruptly turned, and strutted towards the building. With a pout, he took a sip from his wine glass. Without so much as looking back, the man continued on. "Now, we do have uniforms for you all, however, there is something I'm sure you all would rather do first," He said as he traveled down the white halls. "After all, one of the most exciting parts of saving the world is meeting the hero you'll do it with, right? From this moment on, your very lives will change. If any of you have any second thoughts, now is the time to back down," He paused, before he looked to a girl in particular. "Except you Aino, you have to stay." So she was something special, is that right? Maita looked over to the girl, with a inquisitive gaze. He had already thought long and hard about taking part in this, so when the man opened the doors to their next room, Maita had no qualms pushing through to follow him. Sitting in a chair was a fairly handsome gentleman with long white hair. "Director, I assume it's time?" he asked, his voice tinged with a German accent. "Indeed it is, Albert!" The man answered, standing to walk by the scientist. "Why don't you explain to our new members what exactly how they'll summon their Servants?" With a nod, the white haired man approached the other and gave a polite bow. "Greetings everyone, my name is Albert Einstein, but you can call me Albert, if you wish," He greeted, as he turned to the window. "That room is our Summoning Chamber, and in it lies perhaps our most valuable artifact. It's a table of Arthurian fame, the Round Table, a place where heroes gather. Using it and your catalysts, we will call your servants into the world. Now, we have to do this one at a time, so what you'll do is walk into the room, and place your catalyst on the table. Then, you place your hand on the edges on the able, and let your magic flow into the the table, and then... call out! Be it a chant, a cry for help, or just a command, if you lay all your convictions into your words and reach out, a hero will answer you!" "Radical..." Maita stared at the ancient artifact that they possessed. In the world of Magic, this place no doubt had holy significance. But this was an artifact that even historians would love to have their hands on, and here he was, standing in front of it. His magic was going to pour into it. "RADICAL!" He shouted again, almost spilling his drink as he put both hands in the air. Before addressing Aino again, their host spoke once more. "And there you have it! Your destiny now awaits for you! Who will step up first?" Even with some alcohol in his system, Maita was still nervous. He waited for the first to approach, which didn't take long at all. Aozaki Souta was the first to summon a Caster, Dr. John H. Watson, famous second fiddle to the great detective Sherlock Holmes. Aino Koskinen was second, as she summoned the Saber, Masamune, famed swordsman of the east. The third, a large man of African descent, entered the chamber and closed the doors behind him. Playing on the safe side a bit, but Maita didn't blame him. He walked out with a servant, both of them with smiles on their face. Genevieve Mireille came next, summoning Raoul d'Argery, the assassin. These were all impressive figures of history, and they were to be fighting alongside their summoners?! This was insane. With his nerves calmed down just a bit after seeing everyone go about the ritual so seamlessly, Maita stepped up to bat. "Maita Masahiko, at your service!" He bowed towards the others. "I look forward to saving the world with all of you!" He put himself upright, before turning around and waltzing into the chamber. Looking upon the actual Round Table was dumbfounding, as he placed his wine bottle on the ground in front of it. With a nervous hand, he placed the ring on the table, and then his hand on the outer edge. Putting his magic into the legendary artifact, Maita thought of how to go about with this summoning...he had to put himself into it...but how? Suddenly he began to beatbox, as the words busted out of him in sync with the rhythm. "Maita on the mic now, yo yo yo! Listen up servant, to this nasty flow~. We gotta save the men, the women, the children~! Show yourself now, cause this is only the beginnin'~!" When Maita finished his chant, the table lit up, the area around him suddenly went dark, while also producing hundreds of tiny lights, as if it was a clear night with the stars shining above. The lights gathered to a single point before releasing a burst of energy, revealing the form of his servant. It was a young child, one that couldn’t be any older than seven years old, with wild purple hair barely tamed in a ponytail, and a green spear obviously made for an adult in his hand. He had a wolfish grin on his face as he looked up to Maita, obviously trying to look cool despite the fact he barely made it past the man’s waist. “It’s nice to meetcha, Master!” The boy said with a grin. His smile faltered slightly as he spoke his next words. “Sadly, due to a curse on me, I can’t tell you my name. You can call me Lancer until the time you learn my name,” He smiled widely again. “Let’s do our best!” Maita was positively thrilled, as he ruffled up the small child's hair. "Well look at that! Ain't you a cool little dude with that huge spear!" Maita picked up the child, which proved to be difficult factoring in the weight of that giant lance the boy clung onto. Somehow he managed, and hiked him over his head and onto his shoulders, as both of them walked out of the room together. "Looks like I won out this time, huh!? Lancer's pretty righteous!"

"I'm not good at explaining things with words. So I'll just explain it as best I can with pictures! That should work, right?" Kio scratched the back of his head. It was a method of learning a quirk he wasn't familiar with, but he was confident in his ability to make it work. "I can try. I'm very much so a visual learner, but if you jot down the particulars, I should have enough info to make a memory card." He was bs'ing of course, but it was worth a shot. If it didn't work, he could always ask her to explain it more precisely. Nonetheless, he'd definitely have to see the quirk in action some more. Takehiko was the next to gather into their little group meeting, saddling up to Ayane just as he did. "Suppose we'll be working together eh? All I really remember about Page Master is his power is reliant on book's he's holding so... any of us have quirks to abuse that particular weakness?" "Hmmmm..." Ayane seemed to pause in thought, while simultaneously working on her magnum opus. "Kio, do you have a memory card that lets you turn your arms into hoses or something?" Kio shook his head in disappointment. He reached into his pockets, and pulled out two blue rectangles, placing them on Ayane's desk. They were clearly transparent, and looked like they possessed small strands of organic material, likened to neurons, magnified to the nth degree. "Sadly, I don't think either of these guys can help us with that. I'll let you in on some top secret information though, and tell you what they are." Pointing to the memory card on the left, he began to explain. "This here is Assault Dust. It basically allows me to create dust, and manipulate the dust that I create. Pretty nifty, right?" He then moved his pointer finger to the only remaining card on the desk. "This here is Barrier. I can project a dome shaped barrier in any radius of my choosing, and can even produce multiple. However...I have to stand stationary and concentrate to produce them. They're about as hard as a steel wall. I think it would be the best option in a regular brawl. Against Page Master, however, I'm not so sure." He picked them back up, swiftly but gently, and placed them back into his pocket. "If I had Brine, this would've been easy, but the girl had to lose her wits and disappear. How unfortunate." He shrugged. In the midst of his babbling, Ayane had finished her drawing. "And voila! Basically, that's how it works." Kio looked at the picture, a tad frustrated. "What the hell is this..." He asked, with an eyebrow twitch. "This is bullshit. Are you an idiot?" He asked, tearing the paper away from Ayane's hands. He turned it around, only to shove it in her face, while pointing at the note she had produced. He expressed his dissatisfaction calmly. "And what the hell is this drawing of an eighth note? Aren't you a musician or something?" He sighed, putting the paper back on Ayane's desk. "Explain it like you know what you're doing, or you're useless to me." Kio then turned his attention towards Takehiko. "You. Start explaining your quirk in detail, now. I want access to all of your pieces as well, so make sure you give me the nitty gritty of each one." He then scanned the classroom for their last teammate, Ren, before raising his voice. "And you, Sanada Ren! Would you like to join us, or would you rather waste time chit-chatting with someone you aren't getting graded with?"

"At the end of this week, you all will be doing a team-based exam, it says. It says here that you all are going to be facing off in teams of four against staff of the school… that seems a bit excessive… But anyway! I'm gonna go ahead and list off the teams now, so that you all can get to know each other better ahead of time, and make plans for the end of the week!" "Next in line is Kanda Takehiko, Sanada Ren, Akagi Kio, and Ukemei Ayane! You four will be facing off against your literature teacher, Page Master!" Group combat against a pro hero! Most aspiring young students would probably worry if they could handle such a task. Ayane wasn't like most students. Speaking of most students, as the others began to gather up into their respective teams, Ayane's own team started gathering around her desk. Must have been her magnetic personality. The first one to show up was Kio, with a pen and paper in hand. He was like super smart and stuff, so it was probably for strategizing. "Looks like we'll be working together! Lucky me! You've got a great quirk. Please...write down how it works...it's easier for me to make a memory card that way. We could totally rock out together if I end up using it!" Not quite. Picking up the pen and putting it to the paper, Ayane said as she got started on her Quirk explanation, "I'm not good at explaining things with words. So I'll just explain it as best I can with pictures! That should work, right?" Ayane paused for a bit to think as best she could about the mechanics behind Compose, before getting back to work on her explanation. As she did, Takehiko also showed up! "Suppose we'll be working together eh? All I really remember about Page Master is his power is reliant on book's he's holding so... any of us have quirks to abuse that particular weakness?" "Hmmmm..." Something to beat books? She did know of one such thing. But she couldn't do it. But maybe... "Kio, do you have a memory card that lets you turn your arms into hoses or something?" It wasn't long after asking that that Ayane triumphantly turned her sheet of paper around, displaying an illustrated explanation of the mechanics behind Compose. "And voila! Basically, that's how it works." "First off! Omuro Yumi, Yokuna Yasha… Seigi… Taiana… And… Kemuri Nataria… why does this class have so much katakana… Anyway, you four will be fighting your science teacher, Hemlock." Even if it was four of them, everyone here was still just a bunch of students. Squaring off with an actual pro hero so early on seemed just plain unfair. Well, it could have been worse. It wasn't like Yumi was one of the unlucky sods that got put in the group meant to fight Ruby Heart. For now, at Diana's suggestion, students were splitting into their respective groups to plan ahead for the trial to come. That was a good idea. Tapping on the chair of Yasha in front of her - who seemed very into the idea of getting to beat up his science teacher - Yumi nodded over in Diana's direction and said "Come on, let's go." Seating herself in the chair that Takehiko had just left behind, Yumi gave her newfound teammate a polite wave before getting to the point of being here. The plan. Hopefully Diana had one, because Yumi sure didn't. "So... Hemlock. I don't have much of a mind for combat, so if you've got a plan, just let me know and I'll play along with that." With Diana's incredible strength and Yasha's tool powers, combined with Yumi's electricity and Natalia's smoke, maybe this wasn't so unfair after all.

──── ⋆⋅✦⋅⋆ ──── So there was a condition for victory beyond, well... Winning a fight. That was good to know, they could probably make up something to hold up in that case. Whether it was going to be, well... That was gonna be hard to figure out, honestly. She had no idea on where to even start, really. She could possibly scrounge together some ideas, a mock rescue attempt maybe, tie a hand up, who knows what it might be? "Just drop a building on them!" Ah, yeah, words to live by. Rika rolled her eyes a tiny bit at that, before nervously fidgeting in her seat for a brief moment. She closed her eyes as she considered the options, it was... Hard to do that, when she didn't really know what to expect. Obviously, that's what they wanted, they wanted the groups to have to think on their toes at least a little bit... "Hey Tsubasa, Sun...and you said your name is Rika, right?" She snapped out of her thoughts as she tilted her head up, her eyes opening at the boy who looked like he was distressed when she was introducing herself to the class. He looked like he had been dealing with a massive headache. She smiled to him, bring a hand up in a small wave, "Oh, yeah! Rika, nice to meet you too, Ben..." She took his hand, giving it a small shake as well as she nodded her head, "Yeah. Looks like it's us... Hopefu-" She didn't get to finish that thought though, instead she was quickly interrupted by cat. "Nothing... To worry about? I dunno, I think we've got plenty to worry about. We don't know what our actual task is gonna be, aside from trying to overpower someone with more practice and experience than us." She snickered a tiny bit at the bravado from Tsubasa though, barely even noticing the mistake with her name, before raising an eyebrow, "...Fight a bear? I can't say it really ever crossed my mind. Generally you're supposed to, like... Play dead against them, right? Maybe we can do that against the bear then. I'd say we should come up with a plan, but... What can we plan for when we don't know the specifics? Hopefully we can get some actual time before the exam to plot a bit." ──── ⋆⋅✦⋅⋆ ────

I'm doing another one of these. Time to be rude to fictional characters again. Tagforce 1 #2: Alvaro Another Slifer Red student, Alvaro can be found at the volcano whenever he isn't in class. His deal is that he's made the classical blunder of thinking that dueling strength can be improved by increasing your own physical strength. But despite being put in Slifer Red and losing duels, he refuses to stop working out. It's the only thing he cares about. He refuses to accept sandwiches from you because they don't build muscle. Probably not a good idea for him to hang out at the volcano all day long then. It's pretty neat to have a character who is so utterly wrong about a basic concept like strength, but since he's a generic side character they unfortunately don't flesh him out at all. He's just the silly muscle guy who runs a semi-annoying high-DEF deck. Alvaro's deck actually has a focus, unlike the previous duelist. Just castle up with a Petit Moth equipped with Cocoon of Evolution, then protect it with cards like Chorus of Sanctuary, The Reliable Guardian, and Castle Walls (which he runs 3 of instead of a third Shrink). Then, after he does this for a while, he sacrifices his Petit Moth for Larvae Moth, making him an absolute chad and deserving of Obelisk Blue rank. If only the faculty understood his power. Ok, to be serious, I think the only reason he runs Larvae Moth is so that the AI messes up its own gameplan if he happens to start up the Cocoon timer. This, coupled with his AI spending his DEF-boost cards on his searchers, and his AI sometimes not putting Cocoon on his Moth even when he can for some reason, makes what would be a decent Slifer Red significantly worse. If you can't defeat his high-DEF monsters, you can just deck him out, destroying searchers to shift the favor more in your favor. If I were to remake this deck, I would probably drop the DEF-boosting cards and instead use Heart of Clear Water and other cards that will help protect against effect destruction. After all, no amount of DEF will save you from a Lightning Vortex. Well, neither would Heart of Clear Water, but that's where other protection cards come in. Or even some Counter Traps. Spell Shield Type-8 would also be really nice here. There would also be plenty of room for cards like Doom Dozer and some staples, though by this point he should definitely stop being a Slifer Red. He deserves it though, because of Larvae Moth. Then again, there are several Insect Duelists in this game, so Doom Dozer might fit better with one of them. He definitely needs an extra win condition aside from Cocoon though. Score: 5/10 Next time, I will finally talk about someone who isn't a Slifer Red!

Yasha nodded pensively when he heard his name called, but was still thinking about the cute new girl and it took until after Dreadbolt had finished for him to fully process what had been said. He had to-- No, he GOT TO fight Hemlock. His science teacher. For grades. Standing bolt upright from his seat, he planted his hands on the desk. "Wait. You mean to tell me we get to fight our teachers?! And we're being graded on how well we fight?! And we won't get in trouble if we punch them?!" He turned to the others in the class with his typical toothy smile. "GUYS, THIS IS GOING TO BE AWESOOOOOOOME!!" He roared, his voice rising to the roar of an active chainsaw, revving as his arms flexed in triumph.

This event is starting to look dead on arrival. Let's REANIMATE it! To encourage your participation, members who take up the role of a monster this year will receive compensation in the form of points. The exact amount is still a work in progress.