<camilla> hannah
<hannah> Hi
<camilla> im gonna be streaming
<hannah> I'm at school??
<camilla> but. but but but
<hannah> Shouldn't you be in school too
<hannah> Is it a British holiday
<camilla> yes
<camilla> its IDOLLASTER release day
<hannah> What's that
<camilla> havent you checked the group chat weve been talking about it for weeks
<hannah> I mean yes but there's 34 of you
<hannah> And
<hannah> You're all active somehow
<camilla> anyone would be active for you!
<hannah> Ok
<hannah> Well anyway answer the question

Didn't get much sleep, so I was in early. Hair had been washed, brushed. Dyeing can wait.

(Dying can wait, forever.)

I went to a private school which didn't have a bus. Other people usually drove me places, but my parents were in Dünaburg or Dvinsk and they hadn't hired a chalet.

August had burned like the sun, so by some new law we were punished with a cold September. Half-asleep I had decided that cherry pink or gold or goldenrod or dull silver or platinum didn't fit. Neither did black or navy blue, which I think are more domineering and striking colours, but they didn't suit my fancy.

...what, you think black on top of biege is fine? In a true winter, yes, in this deep winter, no! Biege on biege is practically incest right now, maybe marron or chestnut with a waistcoat but my oak brown waistcoat is in New York, raincoats too heavy, fur coats too gaudy. Sure, you can come up with so many passable combinations, but do they past the test right now?

Stop caring?

Then I'd fall from the top.

It was cold. There was no poetry to that, or even prose. It was just cold. My thermal socks could only go up so far until they're not puffy enough to work, and of course since I had no coat I had no gloves or scarf.

...a scarf probably could have worked with this outfit?

Ah, shut up. I kept walking, reached into my pocket again with my numb fingers.

<camilla> are you familiar with idol culture (I wasn't.)
<camilla> *taps you*
<camilla> Whatever ill keep going.
<camilla> ok well youve gotta know about namco bandai (I didn't.)
<camilla> biiig gaming company from before zkt (What was ZKT... 全国強制統廃合? What's...)
<camilla> they make things other than pacman you know (...the game Lyn programs over and over and over to test out the firmware she makes? Did she not come up with it herself?)
<camilla> one of those things was an idol-management simulator called
<camilla> youre never going to guess this one
<camilla> idolmaster (I never could have guessed that one.)
<camilla> well The Idolm@ster. you know how important symbols and styles are!
<camilla> unsurprisingly idolmaster is a management game where you're a producer for an idol company trying to gain as many fans as possible within a given timeframe
<hannah> So like
<hannah> Thirty minutes real time?
<camilla> ...
<camilla> fictional! time-frame (Why did you add a dash.)
<hannah> How long is it in fiction
<camilla> it depends but in the older games it was seasonal! anyway you get to interact with and play minigames with your idols to level up their stats while getting cute little visual novel story interactions
<hannah> What's a visual novel. Can't you see any sort of novel
<camilla> i know youre sheltered but come on google it
<hannah> Fine (Later, I'm minimising my hand movements until they get less numb. I'll just pretend to know what she's talking about until then.)
<camilla> anyway the us went
<camilla> you live there you know what i mean
<hannah> Sure (Maybe? That's one way to put it?)
<camilla> bandai namco got surrendered in the emergency measures and since then the ips been kinda dead
<camilla> and you know we live in a more enlightened, more Open age. we understand the travails and tortures idols go through more intimately now, we're less apathetic to what happens on behind the stage
<camilla> well im not an esper so maybe i shouldnt talk
<hannah> I'm not one of those weirdos who gets feedback from watching videos (I was.)
<camilla> huh info
<hannah> Info?
<camilla> yeah you just gave me some
<hannah> Oh
<hannah> What's idollaster
<hannah> That has an L
<camilla> i was getting there!
<camilla> a few years ago a few groups decided to make a spiritual successor
<camilla> 34k from the idol fanbase. theyre all weirdos but whatever (This all seemed pretty weird to me...)
<camilla> lunatic cornerstone from the management sim enthusiasts
<hannah> Is that different from the idolmaster fanbase
<camilla> yes theyre into management sims in general
<camilla> like games where you have to give a bunch of orders and keep a bunch of stats balanced within a time limit
<hannah> Fictional time right
<camilla> i mean real time as well
<hannah> Video games are confusing
<hannah> Time is time

Time is time.

I could walk the path to school automatically. It wasn't even being lost in my own thoughts at this point, I was just there in one instant, gone in another.

Doing so wasn't as dignified as I would have liked it to be. It was so mundane, dry, dreary in a normal autumn - how do you think it'll make me feel in this winter?

I'd rather be driven.

Only I wouldn't, because I could hardly sit through those interrogations that come from my parents through our servants, always ending on the same fucking topic. Sure, it's fine that you're passing, but why don't you care about the laws that define the world? The laws that redefine it? The new secrets, politics, history, future.

Please forgive me for not sticking my hands in the dirt to find out what's wrong with the fucking soil.

See, I thought about Brackash a lot because her parents and mine are friends, in so far as either of them can feel friendship.

(I came to my school's reception while thinking about this, and scrape-scraped my boots on the entry mat like it doesn't wear them out, like the things I own weren't better than damage.)

I had to deal with her about once a month. More times in bad times, less when I was lucky.

Personality-wise, Carmen was the child my parents wish they had. She was inquisitive, obsessive when it came to tracking events, a dazed girl in an observatory. I'd like to say she wasn't a prophetess, but she was, a little bit.

Conversely, luckily, I was the child Doctor and Doctor Brackash wish they had: easy-going, a social butterfly, perfectly and utterly normal. Hannah Westmoreland was special and not at all noteworthy, and didn't everyone love her for it? Even if my smiles and my confidence grated against you, my light and my charm redeemed me, didn't it?

It redeemed you just as much, so both of us were and will be happy.

Maybe it sounded like I was ranting to myself as I turned through empty corridor after empty corridor, looking for homeroom, looking out the window at the student athletes training in the morning for what's left of the sports scholarships. Every little edge helps.

I was above ranting, though? Everything I had said connected perfectly. It always has, and always will.

<camilla> Oh well you're not gonna like IDOLLASTER then
<hannah> Why not
<hannah> Don't worry I'll still watch you when I get time
<camilla> lc were famous for making difficulty mods that stretched your attention span and reflexes to their absolute limit
<camilla> there was a rumour that bamako and isfahan's intelligence services contacted them for their esp programme because some people entered altered states while playing
<hannah> Is that why you're playing it
<camilla> im playing it for the challenge!
<camilla> do you think i'm like lav or elly?
<camilla> that i dream of entering heaven bodily like dante?
<camilla> becoming another oppenheimer?
<camilla> those two are fucking crazy
<camilla> im just cammy. the stupid neet little sister who plays video games all day
<hannah> Don't sell yourself short! (I think that's how she does the enthusiasm...?)
<camilla> well im short and i dont have a lot to sell
<camilla> apart from my time and my skill
<camilla> im just in it for the fun
<camilla> and a pittance of cash but mum wont kick me out yet (Did you know British people actually say mum? I didn't figure it out until I was seven. This is a really dumb aside but I genuinely did not believe it at first--)
<hannah> And your loving audience (I get nicer as I get warmer, and I'm walking through heated corridors.)
<camilla> ehe
<camilla> heh!
<camilla> anyway IDOLLASTER is meant to be for a less hardcore audience so it needs something which offsets all its difficulty
<camilla> thats time travel

Time travel didn't remind me in the slightest of Carmen, so it was fine with me, even if I didn't get it.

I entered homeroom. Our homeroom teacher, the bastard, hasn't arrived yet.

The analogue clock ticked away on the wall. It was one minute to seven. I liked it when analogue clocks are near hours, because I had never been very good at reading them.

It was seven. Class began at eight.

Tick. Tick. Tick.

And our time was never time for Carmen, who could read a fat German philosophy book in mere seconds and learn not a single thing about 'being-there.'

Personality-wise? Like she had a personality, like looking through her eyes wasn't wrongness. The curses I saw in full form when I dreamed or my light was brought in the world, that everyone in this forsaken land, on this forsaken planet could always see in part, that divined, guided, twisted their lives to their non-intentions.

I slumped over the desk that was assigned to me. Maybe my head went hazy for a second.

But then I saw it when I closed my eyes, through my annoyance, disgust.

(Rage, fear, revulsion may be more accurate, but aren't those improper, unlady-like things to feel?)

If she doesn't perceive time like us, tick-tick, what does she feel?

In terms for us humans, a bunch of points in similar locations all at once, able to shift through them like they're nothing, looking down on you for being a rank 7 esper but still so bounded to 'fickle' constructs.

I had just lied. How could she look down on you? There's no down in that strange land where arrows go fiveways. Or the other one that steals your parks and their organs and the organs of their organisms, reorders them according to its sorting algorithm, and sells half of it to the third-sphere.

I opened my eyes, rubbed them. I wasn't crazy for not being interested in that, sorry! Even if I was bound to it, if that was my natural talent.

I checked my phone.

<camilla> *taps you*
<hannah> Obviously the technology doesn't exist to do that in real life so it's easy to keep track of
<camilla> yes it does ask tammy!
<hannah> Really?
<camilla> lmfao

I sent a sticker of a crying bear holding a broken heart. Camilla 'reacted' with laughter.

<camilla> theres no character death but theres character burnout
<camilla> it takes place in a comfortable sequestered world
<hannah> Is that why you like it
<camilla> thats why you should watch me play it
<camilla> sequestered doesnt mean everythings great! and its not like the old IDOLM@STER's plots were all sweetness but IDOLLASTERs gameplay loop is about seeing how long you can keep going through adversity
<camilla> your idols WILL pickup incurable maluses over time and on your first few dozen playthroughs you WILL eventually enter a state where you fail every show you enter
<hannah> Do your idols quit
<camilla> no thats character death
<hannah> But they're still alive?
<camilla> thats functionally character death. you dont die and you dont get eliminated in IDOLLASTER. every idol will march forward under the starry sky, even if it's like theyre possessed, even if they cant take it anymore!
<hannah> So determined of them
<camilla> well its not an easy game so im going to need your LIGHT cheering me on to finish it!
<hannah> I'll watch it during a lunch break if I get time or Indianapolis group does
<camilla> youve gotta recommend me to them, these are women with lives
<hannah> I'm a woman with a life

I wasn't. I took my school laptop from under my desk. Didn't even open it up. What were we doing last week? Who knows? Who cares.

I went back on my phone, went to one of the time-waster social media apps.

That's a dumb name for them, isn't it? You can waste time just as easily on a chronological or social organising app, if you really know what you're doing, if you really get focused.

Just as I was about to ask myself 'what's the cat doing...' a thousand times, the door opened.

A student dressed as a generic office lady. Brunette with cropped straight hair, crimson lipstick, okay eyeliner. The clattering of high heels with little knowledge of how to walk with poise. I didn't recognise the brand, didn't think it was worth seeing too far through the new girl to find out. She was monochrome, which suited our deep winter, but does she know how to do it? The dainty chessboard-checkering of her jacket irritated the eyes, and her white undershirt gave the outfit a more cheery feel than fit the day.

She walked over to the teacher's chair, sat down, put a rucksack on his desk.

"Oh, are you Hannah Westmoreland," the girl said.

"I am indeed," I replied. "What's your name?"

"You can call me Miss Owens. I'll be replacing Mr Pratt from now on."

You've got to be fucking kidding. "What happened to him?"

"Fired. Skill issue." ...skill issue?

"What do you mean by that?" I've never heard anyone say that in my life.

"East and Midwestern are incredibly unsatisfied with the quality of their research output compared to the Far West, London, Kinshasa, the Second City and other places, so the Commissioner for Indianapolis and the Cities of Indiana is working on a number of experimental pedagogical reforms, and has decided your school is a good place to start. As a Second City graduate looking for a job, I guess it's down to me to implement them."

"I suppose Mr Pratt would be unable to?" I said, and I meant 'you're from the Second City? God save your soul.' At least that explains why she's so young.

"It's likely. By the Commissioner's honour, he was transferred to Beech Grove, if you're worried about him."

I wasn't.

"What do these pedagogical reforms consist of?"

"Do you know about the Second City's four paths."

Unfortunately. "Yes. Auctoritas, Veritas, Humanitas, Litteras. Would you like to bring them here?"

"No, that's plagiarism, but the ethos behind them is the union of a number of different conventional, pre-Raid sciences into a single discipline with a compelling idea behind them."

Which is stupid because they're chosen arbitrarily. "They're chosen arbitrarily."

"Exactly." Owens, you've lost me. "The Commissioner wants to create a rigorous course that will both inculcate the ability to carry out a number of mundane but professional tasks without erring in the slightest, make discoveries relating those mundane fields to the cutting edge of preternatural research and name and define these relations. As in the Second City, this process is both artistic and scientific and includes humanities and STEM students equally. You were sent to New Stokes High to lead the world, were you not?"

"I was," and to study with an extracurricular passion that these reforms have made curricular.

"You're more talented than most, Hannah. I believe you'll excel."

"Why, thank you," and then I asked Camilla when she was beginning the stream.

<camilla> hannah pay attention!!
<camilla> it comes out today (my time)
<camilla> so i cant do an early morning stream!!!

Really?

Really.