Our Powers | Video | Open

[badbutsadboy]

[The message is public. He has too many people to send it to that he doesn't want to have to filter or tag individually. He's clearly up on a roof somewhere, bundled for the weather.]

I've put it off for as long as I can. I gave the social worker a story about wanting some time with study outside of school before interacting with my peers, due to an unfamiliarity with Earth, and they had me do a school online? For a little while.

But I've run out of time. I've run out of excuses and they want me to go to the meta school, but they said the teachers are Guild-Affiliated.

I'm not going to a school that'd encourage their students to join the guilds.

And I'm not staying with a fake family that hasn't earned my trust.

I'm only putting this message up so people know not to look for me. I have a plan and I've prepared for it. I'll be in touch. And reach out if I need help.

Comments

[demigoth]

That worked?

[ Crying doesn't get kids out of what they have to do in his world. Most of the bad stuff is prophesied, so nothing gets them out of it. ]

Do you think it would still work if I've been going for 4 months?

[badbutsadboy]

Probably not but maybe you could fake some kind of emotional breakdown?

From what I've learned from my foster family, that seems to be a thing human school just does to people.

It sounds like it's probably trying to weed out the weak or force them to be stronger through emotional torture.

Is that what the meta school is like?

[demigoth]

No, they’re not that smart.

[ That is, after all, how Camp Jupiter works by testing the kids upon arrival. It wouldn’t bother Nico so much if it ran like a demigod camp, even the militant Roman one. ]

They want to indoctrinate you, so it’s a school. And if they can’t do that, they’ve been making you practice your powers with them so they know what you can do. And they don’t believe you about your limits until they see them.

[badbutsadboy]

School back home is different. Well, Hexside is, at least. I don't know about the other magic schools.

The teachers and Principal Bump stopped caring about about teaching what was approved by the Emperor and let students study in as many magic tracks as they wanted. They get to choose all their classes and study any magic they want.

And they protected them when coven officials tried to forcibly brand them with coven brands and lock away most of their magic. They were willing to defy the Emperor for their students, and then hid them after finding out Belos was going to kill everyone with brands.

I don't want to go to school here. If I ever went to school I'd want it to be Hexside.

[If. As in, he's never gone to school.]

[demigoth]

[ Nico is reminded that his world is not like Hunter’s world is not like this world. ]

I don’t understand- do you mean brand like Kool-Aid and Nutella or what you do to a cow?

[badbutsadboy]

Cows?

[He's seen them but he doesn't know it because he doesn't remember the name. He's seen a lot of pictures and read a lot of articles about animals since he got here. But Earth has a lot of animals.]

[The only animal he'd been familiar with coming in had been giraffes and that's only because in his section of the multiverse those absolute freaks were exiled to Luz's Earth by the witches and demons of the Boiling Isles. (The weirdos.)]

[Wolves, on the other hand...wolves are cool.]

Your coven mark...it's a permanent mark. Put into your skin.

There are a few different types of magic witches can do. The Emperor told everyone he could hear the will of the Titan. That even though its body was dead, its mind was awake, and that people using wild magic - unrestrained magic - made it sad.

He said it wanted people to choose only one type of magic. And then he figured out how to brand them with a coven mark that blocked out everything but that type of magic. It doesn't hurt but it locks most of a witch's magic away. Irreversibly.

I don't have magic but I still had to get one when I survived my trials to join the Emperor's Coven. [He holds up the mark on his right wrist, that his friends likely have seen many times now, and possibly just mistaken for a rad tattoo.] An illusion witch would be locked to mostly illusion magic if they joined the illusion coven, plant magic for the plant coven, and so on.

The marks were what he was planning to use to kill everyone, so he was trying to force the students at Hexside to get marked before the day he'd set off his trap.

[You know, dude was just over there trying to to magically castrate teenagers against their will to drain their lives in a mass murder ritual with the adults.]

They almost marked my friend Gus by force. With abomination magic, when he's one of the best illusionists in a generation. He loves illusion magic.

[He looks at his own mark, thinks about the lifesucking curse that had clawed its way up his arm in that final fight until he couldn't do anything but grit his teeth and shake on the ground.]

[demigoth]

[ Nico listens and does his best to follow. He still can't equate experiences fully, but - he gets it a little. Greek demigods don't get a brand, but the symbol of their parent glows over their head when their godly parent finally claims them. And that one mark defines so many things: who their parents are, who they'll call siblings, where their bunk is going to be from now on, how other people see and treat them, even their powers. They're stronger after that.

It's not like they can choose who their parents are, even if it would be easier to be someone different.

Maybe he does understand. ]

Your friend got away? Good.

[ He's escaped a school in epic fashion, too, but without any lasting damage. It's... a lot to consider, and without any clear way to help. ]

Have you asked any healers your wrist?