Article 44: Misa, Part 2
Another of my contributors has asked to learn more about my first days at MSF High, so I'll recount it as best I can remember! Do please keep in mind that there's likely something I've forgotten, or that my version of events may not match up perfectly with the way others might remember it. With that out of the way, let me begin.
My first day was, understandably, one of considerable confusion and disbelief. When I had created a character at MSF High for myself, I had planned for it all to be little more than an escape from the mundanity of my life as a teaching assistant, and of course my initial reaction was to assume that I was dreaming or hallucinating. Many people have a tendency to try and snap themselves out of a dream, but in my case I did the opposite and tried to prolong it as long as possible. To that end, my first "day" at MSF High spanned about 50 hours as I struggled to stay awake while attempting to visit every location I had written about and meet every character I had pictured, along with a number of both which were completely new to me. When I finally woke up after passing out from the strain, I came to the conclusion that it was okay to go to sleep. It was a week until classes would start, and I then set on preparing for the upcoming semester as effectively as possible.
One of the earlier tasks I embarked on was a reread of the book I had arrived with. Though it had most of the same writing I had produced before my arrival at MSF High, I quickly found that I could turn to pages seemingly at random and find the relevant statistics of those I was near, then intuited that with enough practice I would be able to slightly alter these numbers. Looking over my own character sheet, I considered the build I had made for myself, with high agility, intelligence and personality balanced out by an abysmal strength and defense and middling accuracy, and briefly considered rewriting myself. By that point, however, I'd already grown attached to my body and instead started working out ways to play to the strengths I already had. While the student uniform I was assigned was fairly cute, my top priority was to obtain an outfit that could assist with my magical studies, didn't impede movement, and showed off my curves better. The answer came to me in the form of the Fenrisco Salesgirl uniform, which I had briefly touched upon in my earlier writings. Not only did it fulfill all of those criteria, it also would afford me the use of a Fenrisco catalog, which I could use to have access to nearly any item I could need so long as I could afford it. While I knew that I could always put myself into debt under Miss Fenris and be given such an outfit as part of the deal to repay her, I didn't much care for the idea of going needlessly into the negative account balance. Instead, I chose to simply approach Miss Fenris and ask for a job as a salesgirl, whereupon she offered me a variety of possible uniforms. I chose the default, as it gave the best balance for what I desired. I've since found little need to physically modify it, though I've poured some of the money I've earned while wearing it back into improving its magical qualities.
The job I had chosen was one I felt uniquely suited to, and as the other students, most of them confused newbies with much less information upon arrival than me, began preparing for the school year, I took the opportunity to look up each of the floormates in my dorm building in my book, analyze their individual statistics, then choose weapon and armor sets to offer them that both fit within their 500 dollar arrival budget and accentuated their specific combat needs. Miss Fenris took notice, and praised me for my entrepreneurial spirit.
The magic teacher wasn't the only one to take notice of me, however. Professor Danielson, the Language teacher, caught me idly looking through my MSF High book during one of his classes, and confiscated it. As he looked through it, however, I saw something in his eyes that showed he was able to, at least for a moment, push through the clutter that damaged his mind long ago and see what the book meant to me, and potentially, the rest of the school. After class had ended, he apologized to me for taking it, returned the book to me, and dug through his filing cabinet, remarking that the book revealed that I had arrived without my normal allotment of cash, until he produced a pair of coins embossed with his face. He instructed me to take the coins and use them on my dorm room, which I knew could be expanded through the use of magic or currency. When I did so, a new room budded off my half of the dorm, complete with a printing station and computer connected to the Mahou City netcore. With the machines I'd been gifted, I began to print full-page articles which the school newspaper was able to fold into their own print. They accepted my submissions and since, I've been a regular contributor to the MSF High Free Press. Initially, I thought that the press was simply a thoughtful and functional gift, but a few days after I began using it, it started printing off questions that I would discover upon returning to my dorm room. I'm not fully certain who sends these questions, but the topics were ones I was already interested in and it didn't take me long to start publishing articles in response to the questions. Lately, I've gotten more than a few questions that arrive with something physical, like a small pile of dollar bills or a low-level magic potion. I take it this is some sort of payment for my work, but even if these didn't show up I'd still gladly continue writing.
