Thunder crackled ominously in the distance because of course it did. All the while Roosevelt stood, slightly awkwardly, in front of a strange and foreboding wall. Shifting his weight from foot to foot whilst scanning his surroundings. The reason for this? He was completely lost on what to do. Even after performing a circuit of the academies extensive grounds his search had turned up a distinct lack of entrance and other people. In short Roosevelt Graves was utterly and unequivocally lost. That was until 'help' arrived.
"Oi wanker! You gonna stand there all day or are ya planning on entering." Said a cockney British accent from somewhere behind him. Roosevelt wheeled around, swinging his arms aiming to coat hanger his assailant.
His arm swung through the air. Or at least he tried. Roosevelt had forgotten his current garment and accomplished little more than spinning around wildly. As he did this he caught a glimpse of the man he was speaking to. He was dressed in worn out leather armour and covered with a vast amount of knives. He was also currently jumping away frantically from the perceived blow.
"Alright steady on mate, didn't mean to scare ya. Ya jus' looked a little lost is all."
"Hm, yes I suppose one could say so. I just can't for the life of me figure out how to enter this blasted place." Said Roosevelt frustratedly as he mimicked the action of throwing up his arms in defeat.
"Ah new here are ya?" Said the leather-clad white male in an amused fashion. Seemingly having seen this very same problem happen time and time again to first years.
This annoyed Roosevelt if this problem was common enough then why the fuck did the academy refuse to create an entrance! It was crazy. This caused him to chuckle, when in glass houses. Also, why should he be surprised at this unorthodox entry method, nothing else here followed the norm.
"Yes I am, also would you do me the favour of cutting off these restraints, they make it quite difficult to move." He said while gesturing toward his bound arms with an awkward and painful jerk of his head.
"Oh yeah, shit sorry mate I was wondering what they were for. There we go, anyway, as I was just about to tell ya, all ya need to do is walk into the wall. Don't matter where, You end up at the same place anyhow. Also, why'd ya want your grabbers back so bad, they'd be sure to cut em off insi- Oooff!" He was cut off as Roosevelt punched him square across the face and ran through the apparently fake wall. Hoping that it taught the bastard a lesson on not to sneak up on people.
Roosevelt lunged through the faux wall and shivered as the cold feeling of it passed through his being. It was like passing through a chilly but fast flowing waterfall, not long enough of a stay for it to be painful but cold enough and with enough resistance for it to be safely classified as needlessly unpleasant.
The view he saw afterwards would be described as anything but.
Roosevelt currently stood on an island of turf, surrounded on all sides by the jagged walls and veiled overhead by what he originally believed to be a black sheet but upon closer inspection turned out to be the substanceless mass that is the space between realities.
The buildings themselves were as varied as the people that walked them. Roosevelt saw the modern skyscrapers he had grown used to during his childhood in New York, standing alongside docked spaceships. He saw burnt down buildings straight out of a horror movie and fantasy castles the spires of which pierced into the sky.
Roosevelt stood their gawking, taking in the crisp, cool air and the magnificent sights into the very fibre of his being. This place, he thought, is truly a marvel.
His gawking was stopped as he saw a sight that would haunt him for the rest of his days, three separate queues that all ran perpendicular to each other. No that didn't quite cut the enormity of the queues that presented themselves before him, the things were gargantuan, stretching out for as far as the eye could see and then some.
Standing in them were a variety of natural and unnatural oddities. Roosevelt saw people, wolf people, squid people, robot people, people made of air and other smatterings of elements and at one point he could swear he saw a person comprised entirely by the visual representation of the word 'huh?' In the face of this, Roosevelt could think of literally nothing to do but stand and gawk like a common country bumpkin.
"Oi new meat, you gonna get in a line or are you going to look at em' all day?" Asked a slightly too gelatinous frog creature who seemed to be oozing apart before Roosevelt's very eyes.
He didn't even respond to the thing before he conformed, getting in line and waiting. And wait he did.
He stood there for hours by his reckoning, taking step by agonizing step as some other lucky sod got permitted entrance into the now visible grand entrance hall of the academy.
Over these hours however he had time to take in his surroundings, he had noticed that the people he assumed to be prefects from the fact that they patrolled the borders of the line each wore an identical sash of black colour with a red trim made out of a material that from a distance he believed to be akin to velvet.
"I shall have your head for this mortal!" Screamed a boy currently clad in an all-consuming black cloak as he raged against the arms of several prefects that held him still. He stood at the head of the line that ran perpendicular to Roosevelt's and from his new spot near to the head of his own line he could see him off in the distance. Then seemingly out of nowhere and with very little provocation one of the prefects took out a gun and splattered the prospective student's brains over the walls, floor and other young adults.
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Roosevelt raised an eyebrow at the scene wondering what on earth possessed the gun-wielding man to do that, then presumably in response to his confused expression the being behind him answered his curiosity.
"Its what they do to you if you have the stupid idea to try and sneak in contraband." Said the slightly off-kilter cat-person. Roosevelt tilted his head slightly to the right as to align himself with the creature before giving the genderless cat-person an appreciative before turning back to his own line, now becoming very aware of the bloodstained grass at its head.
Contraband, hmm wonder what they count as contraband. He thought, not that worried about his own demise as his current lack of physical possessions made it hard for him to have anything to smuggle in.
Roosevelt reached the head of the line in what he believed to be a rather anticlimactic fashion for such a long wait in such a grandiose place. Having been met immediately upon arrival with a disinterested utterance of the word 'name' and the almost unconscious response that followed he realised that he had finally bested the queue.
Standing in front of him were several strangely human looking beings. One was the most attractive woman he had ever met, she had platinum blonde hair that reached down to her waist and the high and noble cheekbones of an aristocrat. Her only non-human features were her long and pointed ears.
The other person that stood with her was a large and bearlike man. He was covered from head to toe in midnight black fur and it was with his own, strangely high pitched and feminine voice that he had asked Roosevelt's name.
"Do you have any items that you wish to declare before scanning." Said the bear in a voice that was reminiscent of the cartoon characters Roosevelt had watched growing up.
"No, I do not. But this raises the question of my current lack of belongings. I was recently brought here by Steve. Ah sorry, I meant a remarkably well-dressed man with little to no explanation on what would happen upon arrival. So I was wondering whether this place takes care of individuals such as myself or whether I am expected to provide my own succour." He said quickly, voicing the slight worries that had begun to plague him more and more over his wait.
"Ah, part of the scholarship program are you ya lucky bastard, don't worry, all will be explained when you get to your dorm. Which as it so happens we are required to determine now." Said the bear as he gestured toward his stunning companion in a matter that made it very clear who exactly would be doing this, 'determining.'
"Alright, as I'm sure you are aware this academy spans a multiverse of genres and themes for various antagonists and villains. As such and to help keep murderous rampages to a minimum we have split the different students into genre-specific dorm rooms. Now, all though this doesn't determine the classes you are allowed to take later on, it does, however, alter your overall experience with the academy. As such we do advise you to choose carefully." She said a voice that was a smooth as silk before listing off the specific dormitories to him.
There were your more self-explanatory type ones such as fantasy and sci-fi. But then there were abstract type things such as Horror, thriller and noir which when asked about were described in order as. Horror was described as a dorm which prepared you for the rigours of becoming an unholy, horrific terror and mostly caters to our more, monstrous students or those who by profane ritual or scientific experiment wish to become such. Thriller was described as a dorm that gave students a taste of the fast-paced and mysterious world that they need to become accustomed to. It also has a strict, no speculation after 10 pm curfew. Noir was the hardest to describe and she said it was simply a gritty and edgy world for posers and supervillain wanna-be's, Roosevelt thought she might be a little biased.
In the end, though he decided upon the horror dormitory when asked why by his interviewer he spoke simply that he found it the most ambiguous and genre-specific of the types and that it offered the most opportunities. If you peeked into his head however only one word was repeated over and over again. Blood.
The girl, a little unnerved by his creepy attitude handed him over a sheet of paper with his room number and a rudimentary mind map of the school that was given to him via compulsory telepathy.
As he stepped over the threshold, however, he let out a loud and blood-curdling wail in as high-pitched a voice as he could manage. For those in direct proximity, it was seen as the weird and annoying action of a madman. For the only other scholarship student who currently stood outside the walls debating whether or not to enter, it was the final straw that caused him to turn his life around and go back to the normal world.
He would go on to become a solicitor. The universe has long since questioned whether or not he had managed to cause more sorrow without the academy's help than he would have with it.