She was lost in the cavernous hallways and she did not want to admit it, but knew it to be true.

She didn’t expect it to reply.

It scared the living daylights out of her when it did. "You are in the hall of lost souls."

The look on her face was enough to convince it to elaborate. "You walk down this hall to get to the headmistress’s offices. Reasons for the name. You want to head down that hallway behind you to get to your dorm, Ailsa."

She didn’t notice the suit’s cruel laughter.

After a few minutes of endless hallway, she felt her eyelids get heavier. Looking at her wrist, she noted the time, but then when she looked at the wall, a clock mysteriously appeared with another time then what she had. "Wha- stupid clock." She continued her journey, only to bump into another person, this one looking a bit young for her.

"I’m Rya Starling."

"How old are you? You look young to be an author."

"Like you’re older!" Rya replied indignantly.

Ailsa bristled at the remark, but hurled back one of her own. "Just how old are you anyway, five, six, I’d guess two from your attitude."

"Eleven," came a small reply as the little girl had found the scarlet-carpeted floor to be very interesting.

At this, Ailsa’s face softened. "Which headmistress got you?"

"Both of them. Ice-woman first, she was just plain mean, but then that bishie deliverer...as if you couldn’t tell that she picks on us because she can. They both do."

Both girls tentatively turned around, eyes wide when they came to rest on who was with them. A white-haired man, bearing a staff with six rings on it and a blue yukata stood before them, regal and inviting but omniscient at the same time. He warmly smiled at their fear but explained himself to them. "Those two are just very passionate about educating new authors, as am I to direct you to your rooms." He glanced at the both of them, before hitting his stack against the ground. "Good thing for you two that you found each other. You’re both in room 2345."

"No kidding." Rya said. "Are there that many people?"

"Double, technically."

Both sets of eyes went bug-eyed at that statement, but then the monk started chuckling as he walked past them. Who was he to tell the girls where the numbers actually started? "Follow me, newbies and we’ll find where your room is."

If either objected to the term ‘newbie,’ neither dared say so.

It seemed that they had been walking forever when the Ancient showed them their room.

"In you go," he said quietly, closing the door behind him.

He listened as the bell tolled nine and the youja soldiers cried, "LIGHT’S OUT".

Several screams were heard as the clatter of ancient Yoroi and horse hooves raced down the hallway as both girls sank against the door. Ailsa broke the silence of the room with a heavy sigh and "What the hell was that?"

Ailsa took a good look around the room. Much as she hated to admit it, the Headmistresses had good taste. The walls were adorned with simple scrolls with traditional Japanese protective wards and figures and the furniture was cherry wood, polished to a beautiful red sheen. The doors were made of the usual sliding tile, and were covered in Japanese and Chinese characters written in a sprawling hand.

Ailsa didn’t understand any of it.

She knelt by a sandalwood trunk in the corner, and lifted out a beautiful kimono, along with a pretty silk obi and a fan.

"Our uniforms?" Rya guessed.

"Guess so."

Ailsa whirled around, holding a very strange colored kimono and a blush to match it. "They do, what?!"

Rya beamed, "Come with instructions."

She slipped it on, ignoring the seven layered kimono at her feet.

It was tight-fitting, and scratchy.

A card tied to a string tied to the obi read, "As your status here grows, so will the size and width of your clothing. Keep that in mind. – The Staff"

"More or less the domineering headmistresses," Ailsa muttered under her breath, only to gasp as her yukata shrank.

"Shut up!"

Rya slipped her own yukata on, and frowned as she realized that she had almost as little room as Ailsa had, but she didn’t dare comment.

Both girls cast each other dry looks as if to say, "Could this get any worse?" They then turned out the lights.

3

In the morning, they found out it did get worse. Their kimonos had shrunk, and done so terribly. And the hallways were as twisting and confusing as before— if not more so. The Nether suits of armor, they found, were not at all helpful— far from it, indeed.

"Are you sure that way is south?" Rya asked tiredly.

"YES," Ailsa snarled, dragging Rya down a randomly chosen hallway.

"You're hurting me," Rya complained.

"So?"

"Let go of me!"

"You heard the girl, let her go, newbie." A new voice said from behind them. The two girls did not even bother to turn around, because they recognized that voice. The melodic tone was that of none other then the water dryad or the headmistress, Nagia.

"Yes, me." The voice was ice-cold, and the speaker was obviously completely oblivious to any verbal harm dealt her. "Your first class today is Infernal Inferno: How the Armors Merge, taught by Ryo Sanada and Talpa. Take the next right turn and you’ll find his classroom."

Both girls knew when they were not going to get any farther, so they followed the headmistress's instructions to the letter. When they stepped into the classroom, they felt lied to. Because the class was not a class, it was a lecture hall, complete with the auditorium seats and the smiling teacher that just looked like they were out to make your life suck.

"Good morning, everyone and please take a seat." The voice came from the young man that looked every day under 25, but his voice was older, much older. "My name is Ryo Sanada, and this," he pointed to another man whose odd apparel belonged in an ancient history museum, "is your instructor Talpa. I pity you all."

"I could not defeat my brother, a man you know as the Ancient One."

"The who?" asked one girl sitting in the back of the room.

"YOU! STAY AFTER!" Talpa roared, and then continued. "He stole the armor from my body, and meditated upon for nine days. In the end, he split it into nine armors: five elements and four seasons. I rather wish he’d turned it into a bunch of paper weights. Then I might have gotten it back a hell of a lot easier."

He droned on in such a matter for an hour and a half.

Afterwards. about 100 exhausted and bored students filed out of the three sets of double doors, all heading down the forever-long hallway to their next class. This one was suppose to be mandatory for the university. A few students muttered the name just below Ailsa’s hearing range, so she asked Rya," Hey, where are we going?"

Rya looked up with tired eyes, "Shimmering essence with Cye Mouri and Kento Rei Faun. It's suppose to be some personality thingamajig."

"I guess they’re fighting stereotypes."

"You guys could use a lesson," said a girl wearing a very large kimono. "Trust me though, when this is over, you’ll be a better writer."

Rya's eyes lit up at the sight of the girl, who has fox features and the attitude to go with it. "Youkai!" The little girl screamed, only to be shushed by several eyes on her and a few instructors eyebrows.

Ailsa was confused. She had read this girl's works, and they were good, but to see her here was something else. "Why are you here?"

Youkai smiled and glanced around, "I'm friends with the headmistresses, we're all alumni."

That didn't help as a bell rang from somewhere, urging students to get to their classes. "Whatever," Ailsa shrugged and turned to see a very stoic Kento Faun. "Yeah, I, um...gone."

Youkai watched this scene and waited for the halls to clear out before setting her own pace.

"Aren't you suppose to be in class, sensei?" Another familiar voice rang from behind her, causing the young authoress to whirl around.

"Headmistress Max. Where's Nagia?" She saw a familiar face, one that she should have recognized in the announcement hall.

The bishie deliverer looked around and shrugged. "I dunno, she's a big girl, and can take care of herself and the students fairly well. How's our special newbie doing?"

The kitsune shook her head in a foreboding manner. "I hope these classes help."

Ailsa took a seat next to Matt and smiled at him in her most charming way.

He glanced over at her, his blue eyes twinkling in humor. "So they were uniforms. I’m glad all I got saddled with was a haori and a hakama."

"Is that a skirt?" Rya asked, giggling.

"Nope. A hakama— a divided skirt. Worn by men on formal occasions. I guess it’s somewhat modern— Eiji, maybe. Not Heian, like you guys."

"At least you know your stuff," said an Oriental-looking girl. "I had to use the instructions to get mine on, and I still didn’t get it right. And then it shrunk."

Both of the roommates snickered at this, for it had happened to them quite a bit. Ailsa whispered to the girl, "Did you badmouth one of the headmistresses or something?"

"Not yet, EEK," she gasped, just as her furisode tightened once more. A small whimper filled the air as the room went silent.

"Ahem," a rough, slightly rusty voice came from the doorway, attracting the attention of both students and teachers.

The man who had entered the room didn’t look special. He didn’t look like the students, didn’t look like anyone any of them had ever seen before.

He looked, frankly, like a four foot prune in a lab coat.

"I am Mad Scientist. You are not knowing me, you American Dub Watchers you! You are to be being ashamed by yourselves!"

Mad Scientist gestured grandly. "And these are to being your teachers."

Another male stood in front of the room, his semi-long hair and turquoise eyes making him seem out of place in this morose castle. "Good morning class, my name is Cye Mouri and my associate here is, you can call him Kento. Since he is not much of a brainiac, unlike Rowan, then he's going to be quite silent and the major disciplinarian. So pay attention, because he doesn't like to move much either." At this, some students laughed, for they too had wrote Kento being lazy.

The others stayed silent, for they knew that the others fell for an old trick when Cye's face went red. "You all stay after today and no lunch for insulting a teacher!"

She screamed as her furisode shrunk.

This alone elicited giggles from the others as that newbie's face turned an ungodly shade of crimson. Cye stood at the front and smiled. "I see that you all are having some problems with your uniforms. Well, there's nothing that I can do about it. Let's get started."

The class continued on with Cye lecturing about how to show personality, Kento demonstrating, and the Mad Scientist just being...mad.

"Ryo…" another girl moaned.

"Quit, Lana." Said another.

Matt only sat and stared at his homework, feeling his mind go blank at the look of the odd kanji. "There’s about seven hundred here I haven’t learned yet. And I have a feeling that faking it isn’t going to work."

The hakama suddenly wasn’t quite so uncomfortable.

He turned around to see Ailsa right in front of his nose. "There is a ton of kanji to learn and I can't fake it."

Ailsa smiled and pulled up her sleeve. "That's okay, there's a kanji dictionary in your room, I cheated." She smiled before glancing at the instructor coming their way. "Kento alert."

Damn him! His hakama shrunk to horrible discomfort. "It isn’t mine, sir! Well it is, but I didn’t know I had it!"

"What, you think you’re in trouble?" Kento smiled, then rounded on Ailsa. "Ailsa! Detention for stealing!"

Ailsa's mouth worked, but no words came out. Never in her life had she been nailed three times for anything.

She smiled innocently and put the dictionary in Matt’s pants-pocket.

The class continued without a hitch from then on until the bell rang, but then once the students got up, they were mysteriously yanked back into their seats, only to see one boy get up and slink his way to lunch. Ailsa’s stomach gurgled at the unspoken insult, as did others, but they did not complain. Cye had left, leaving the Mad Scientist and Kento behind...and they looked hungry.

After lunch, Rya and Ailsa prepared to part ways, but they ran into Youkai again.

"I heard about the lunch ordeal," Youkai said. "Have an orange, the both of you."

They caught the oranges the fox-girl tossed them.

"Enjoy." She smiled coyly, and walked off.

Rya peeled hers without ado and walked off to her next class, humming happily. Her furisode seemed comfortable and she was grateful for that.

"What are you so happy about, kid?" Ailsa had returned to her general attitude of common teen-age angst. Next to her was an eleven year old happily sucking on an orange, while she couldn't even get past the peel. Finally throwing the innocent fruit on the floor, she stomped a foot and forced out, "How do you eat that blasted thing?"

As if by coincidence or just plain karma, Youkai once again spoke up. "Start at the top of the core and pull," she said softly, tossing an already peeled orange to the frustrated girl. "And you all be careful, the heads are on the prowl."

They watched in amusement as Youkai’s twelve layered kimono shrunk— but only a tiny bit.

"Ooh! Oranges!" The voice was still fluidly mellifluous, but now sounded eager, like a little child’s.

"Yes, Nagia, you can have one."

"YAY!" With that the ice-woman’s fingers snatched out and grabbed an orange. She scratched Youkai’s hands, and drew blood— a lot of it.

Nagia apologized several times, and used some of the water in her wrist to stop the bleeding and cleanse the wound. "I keep forgetting that non-Naiads bleed so easily. Blood sheds so easy…"

She threw the orange on the ground, shattering the peel, and sank her ice fangs into the opening in the peel.