//------------------------------// // Dungeons & Dorks // Story: Dear Dean... // by AppleJTZ //------------------------------// Monday mornings always had a dry and slow feeling to them, even at a strict elite academy like Crystal Prep. As Dean Cadence walked through the shining hallways of her school she passed the mourning teenagers rolling in for the first lesson. The students weren’t nearly as radiant as the floors and walls of the hallways, many of them grumpily slurping to their lockers and picking up their books. Most were by themselves, but there were a handful of small groups with some more active pupils among them. On the way back to her own office from the one of the principal, carrying a lot of paperwork under her arm, the dean caught snippets of a few conversations going on between the students. Almost all were centered around the weekend, about what they had been doing on Friday and Saturday night. While at other schools these kinds of conversation were usually cheerful and lighthearted however, at Crystal Prep talking about the weekend basically was a competition for who had spent it in the best way. “I’ve been to that totally exclusive club in downtown!” one girl boasted with her nose held high. “I’ve gone rollerblading and won a price!” a boy yelled, proudly pointing a thumb at his chest. “I went to a five star spa where my parents afforded me the most expansive treatment they had!" “I’ve watched the newest Daring Doo movie before it was released in theatre!” “I got backstage on a rock concert!” On and on it went all over school, everybody trying to impress the ones around them with how much better their weekend had been than theirs. The ones who couldn’t match up with those fantastic tales silently stood around, making an even more lethargic impression than the average student on a Monday. Cadence looked around the pupils in the hallway, one half arrogantly boasting about their weekends while the other half slumped their shoulders, feeling left out. By the time she arrived at the door to her office several sighs had made their way out of her mouth. With all the paperwork in her arms it took her some effort to press the knob, but eventually Cadence managed to open the door. As she entered her office and closed it behind her she let out a small yawn. Stretching herself slightly she wondered for a moment what she had done this weekend herself. A look on the huge staple of documents on her desk she had brought from home reminded her of the answer. Her high heels clapped on the floor as she dragged herself over to her working place. Setting the batch from Principal Cinch next to her own she sat down on her chair. The first thing she noticed was the light for the answering machine on her telephone was blinking red. On the display next to it she could read the number three. “Two minutes gone and three new calls” she mumbled. Two of them were probably the principal with new tasks, and the last one a call from a teacher, either asking about the curriculum or reporting a problem with a student. Before she checked her calls Cadence gazed at the screen of her computer. She had just booted it when the principal had called her to her office, so she first had to type in her password in order to land at her desktop. To no surprise the icon for new emails greeted her with by blinking hectically. Though she didn’t really feel very motivated Cadence clicked on the symbol. A window popped up, but it took a moment for the computer to load. As the first emails rolled in it became quickly apparent why, for the sheer mass that had rolled in during the weekend seemed to test the machine’s limits. Cadence set her elbow on her desk and her head on her hand, her eye-lids falling down slightly as she watched email after email flood in. When she caught one named “Friendship report” however she sat up straight, completely awake again. Immediately she grabbed her mouse, moving the cursor as fast as possible towards the email as it was rapidly pushed down by the new ones arriving. Just before it vanished at the bottom of the screen she double-clicked on the name. The cursor turned into an hourglass, her computer needing a few seconds as it still loaded the other emails in the background. Eventually a new window appeared, and after a few more seconds the text popped up. Cadence leaned in to her screen, and began to read it down. Dear Dean Cadence, First off we couldn’t decide on who should write the report, so we’ve sent it around and everybody wrote a paragraph. For a friendship to last, one would think you need similar interests and hobbies. While it is true that a friendship shouldn’t be built on thin air however, we found it is not so important what you do with your friends, just as long as you do it together. When you spend time with your best friends, even the most dull and boring activities can turn out to be quite fun. It also helped the game we played didn’t turn out to be dull and boring at ALL! I mean it seemed like some dork stuff only absolute nerds can enjoy, but it was almost as fun as soccer or motocross! Okay, maybe not that much fun, but it was really good. So yeah, don’t judge a book by its cover, or a game by how dorky it looks – you might miss out on something really awesome! You should also be considerate when your friends’ playstyle doesn’t match your own. Some people are stricter with the rules, while others tend to ignore them. But even when you’re absolutely right and your friends are basically cheating, sometimes it’s better to be lenient and just enjoy the game. Of course, the others should also consider no to be too lenient and follow the rules sometimes for the sake of those who actually take them serious. and its pretty dumb to play sumthin in a group when everyone just plays for themselves^^ weve learned working against each other isnt nearly as fun as working together even though teasing sunny is really fun too ;) but when you use teamwork and stuff you can even beat a really tough beast lik a dragon :) We didn’t actually beat the dragon. oh shut it sugar >-< Hey, this is a friendship report we’ll send to Dean Cadence, so stay serious! And would you be so kind to remove my name from your part and formulate it more generally, Lemon? yeah nope :P Then at least stop putting these notes back in after I delete them! I’m the one who puts them back in, and I won’t stop to do so since it would falsify the report. You two are the worst! Okay, back to topic. Since the others were so kind to leave no lesson for me to report on, I guess I’m stuck with writing some sort of ending. All in all, I think we really had a great weekend together, and spend a wonderful time as friends - even though we all nearly ended up putting a scar on each other several times. What do you mean nearly? I still have a bump on my head because you threw a damn dice at me! Well considering I got eaten by a mimic on our third try because you pushed me into its mouth I’d say we’re even♥ That was only in-game, and I just tried to get you out of the evil wizard’s range! If you had calculated in the weights of your characters you would have noticed that this would cause her to fall into the mimic’s mouth. You stay out of this Pigtails! yay everybody against gogo!! ;p STOP USING THE REPORT AS A CHATROOM!! Okay, okay. So we had a bit of a rough time, learned a lot of important stuff, and no we’re all cookies and sunshine. Regards, Sunny Flare, Indigo Zap, Sugarcoat, Lemon Zest and Sour Sweet After finishing the report Cadence needed to lean back a moment until she could stop laughing. She wiped a small tear from her eye, slowly calming down. Putting a hand on her chin she looked thoughtfully at the email. “Dragons, evil wizards and mimics” she whispered to herself. She gazed at one of the drawers of her desk, one that, unlike the others, was locked. After taking out the key from her pocket she unlocked and opened it. Instead of even more documents and office utensils several personal items (which of course were forbidden to bring to school) were lying in it, photos of family and friends as well as some small items. She searched for a while through it, until pulling out a sheet of paper from the bottom of the drawer. It was the character sheet of a table top RPG she had played a long time ago, when she was still a student at Crystal Prep herself. The paper was a little smudged due to its age, but she could still read everything. The character depicted on it was a sorceress, a princess from a faraway kingdom in the North that was under the siege of a dark warlock. Nostalgic memories were overcoming her as she remembered how she, Shining Armor and their friends had spent entire weekends fighting terrifying dragons, mischievous wizards and hordes of brutal ogres. The game for this particular character sheet had never been finished, but although the last time she had played was several years ago she had kept it as a reminder of the fun she had in those days, how it had helped her deal with the strict education and stress at Crystal Prep Academy – and certainly not because she secretly hoped Shining Armor would invite her one day for another round. After dwelling in fond memories for a while she printed out the friendship report, and put it alongside her old character sheet into the corresponding folder. As she returned to her desk she saw her computer was finished loading the emails, 287 new one lying in the folder. “One of those Mondays we are gonna break the 300” she joked, feeling rather upbeat as she scrolled through the mails. She stopped when she stumbled upon one with the name “Friendship report, one more thing”, having been sent a few minutes after the other one. Frowning in confusion the dean clicked on it, a small text window appearing on her screen. Not related to friendship, but another thing we’ve learnt is that you should really bring along a clock when you play tabletop RPGs in a basement. It’s kind of embarrassing when you are in the middle of fighting an evil dragon and suddenly your mom comes in to tell you it’s time for breakfast… Quietly the dean nodded at the screen. That, as she knew herself too well, was indeed a very valuable lesson.