Academystuck

[Sailor Vulcan]

In an alternate alpha timeline, John accidentally prototypes Rose's Mage Wars Academy core set. Now all the monsters in the medium play the game too. John and his friends must duel their way through countless enemies. If they lose even once, they will die. Even worse, the Alternian government has become aware of the power of the chat client Trollian to communicate across time and universes, and they are using it to spread their influence to other worlds without even entering the medium! What will our heroes do?
-----

Disclaimer:

I do not own Mage Wars or Homestuck! Homestuck is an interactive webcomic by Andrew Hussie which can be found here: mspaintadventures.com

And of course we all know who owns Mage Wars. (It's Arcane Wonders, in case you didn't know).

This is my own retelling of Homestuck where the characters play Mage Wars Academy. It's not quite a crossover since the actual world of Etheria still isn't real in the story. However, places from the Homestuck universe like prospit and derse and the land of wind and shade etc, do exist in this story.

Now what are you waiting for? Insert the Sburb gamedisc and...

Press Start
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The following message was broadcast to all of humanity from an unknown source:

"I don't have much time! Your session will begin soon if it hasn't already! Anyone who wants to live must be at the current address of a registered user of the game 'Sburb' ASAP! I mean it! Otherwise you WILL die! This is not a joke!

And John? I just wanted to say--"

There was a loud crash like a door breaking down.

"I'm sorry!"

----

"Oh crap." John had accidentally knocked over his stack of birthday gifts. The one on top was from Rose, and it fell down into his kernel and burst open! Cards with a strange symbol on them:

M
W

went flying everywhere and disappeared. He quickly called up Rose, Dave and Jade on Pesterchum to tell them what happened.

"Guys? I think I messed up. Really badly."

"What did you do?" asked Rose.

"I accidentally prototyped the game you sent me for my birthday."

"Oh. Damn. Did you read the card?"

"Which one?" asked John. "There were lots of cards in that thing, they all went flying everywhere and disappeared."

"She means the birthday card, doofus," said Dave.

"Oh. I didn't read it," said John. "What did it say?"

"Just that I got that card game from my mom for Christmas, and I figured it was more your kind of thing than mine. Since you prototyped it, I guess I'm going to have to learn how to play it after all?"

"Don't worry guys, I already have it taken care of," said Jade. "I contacted Arcane Wonders (that's the the company that makes the game John prototyped), telling them that this would happen. I've also contacted a few experts in science and diplomacy. Of course, no one believed me at the time, but I bet that's changed now."

"And let me guess," said Dave. "everyone you contacted is on their way to our houses right now in order to survive the apocalypse and help us survive our session?"

"You got it! Arcane Wonders, Mage Wars Academy players from all over the world, and a bunch of experts in science, philosophy, ethics and diplomacy, as well as all their family and friends, are already on their way to our houses right now. They will teach us how to play Mage Wars and help us fight in the medium."

"How soon will they be arriving?" asked John.

"Soon," said Jade. "Good luck everyone!"

Their was a knock on John's front door and the doorbell rang. John's dad, Mr. Jacob Egbert went to answer it. His jaw dropped at what he saw.

"John! We have visitors! Thousands of bloody visitors! Get down here and say hello like a gentleman!"

"In a minute!" said John.

He began pestering Rose on Pesterchum.
------

Ectobiologist: Rose! There are too many of them to fit in my house! What do I do?

TentacleTherapist: What do you think? Just go to the Sburb client window, and on the file menu click settings. Then change the address in your user profile to include your whole city by deleting the street and street number in the current address box. That will trick the game into thinking you've moved, and that the whole city is your house."

Ectobiologist: Seriously? It can't be that easy.

TentacleTherapist: ...That's what I thought too at first. But it does work. Apparently whoever made the game isn't that smart. Unfortunately the same trick won't work for whole countries or the world. I'm not entirely sure why.

Ectobiologist: Okay...I'll take your word for it. Thanks Rose!

Ectobiologist is offline.

[Sailor Vulcan]

"Hi," said John, humbly waving to the crowd.

Unfortunately, the people who had made it to the very front of the crowd were reporters.

"So this is the famous John?"

"You're just a kid!"

"Hey, do you know whose voice it was that was blasting through the sky last night?"

"Is this all a hoax?"

"The world's not really about to end, is it?"

John began to shrink in on himself from all of the attention. Mr. Egbert snarled at the reporters. "Back off and give my son some damn breathing room!"

The crowd began to quiet somewhat. There were still a lot of people talking, but not too many for some people near the front to hear John answer a few questions.

"No. I don't know whose voice that was... I don't know if I'm the "famous John", but I am a registered Sburb player and my name is John, so...oh, and I don't know for sure if the world is about to end, I just heard on the news that NASA is saying that there are a TON of meteors headed this way, most of them are level 8 on the Torino scale, apparently."

"And what's with the rumors about some card game with cosmic significance which you're going to use to fight evil?"

John and his father stared at the reporter.

"How do you know about that!?" John exclaimed at the same time as his father shouted "My SON is not fighting anybody! He is just a child!"

The parts of the crowd that could hear him stared at John.

Mr. Egbert glared at his son. "John, please explain to me what on Earth is going on."

John looked up into the sky. Tiny pinrpicks of light could be seen in the distance that weren't there before.

"We don't have time. I'll explain it when we're in the medium." John rushed back inside the house, accidentally slamming the door behind him in his haste.

[Sailor Vulcan]

The meteors were coming closer, and closer. People were starting to get worried. Then they saw that John was doing something out on the balcony of his house. Some strange machine had appeared out of nowhere, and John was creating things out of it. Not like a chemist, there were no recognizable vials of chemicals being mixed and matched. Instead he was using items previously stored using captchalogue technology, combined with...fruit gushers of all things. The machine didn't seem to be doing any recognizable chemistry. It seemed like one of those weird item-combining machines in RPGs.

Finally a strange glowing blue tree appeared out of thin air, and a strange glowing blue apple dropped from its branches into John's hands. The tree disappeared. The meteors were very close now, people were screaming.

John bit into the apple.

His whole town, as well as all of the many visitors, disappeared in a flash of light.

And the world ended in fire.

[Sailor Vulcan]

It had been a few days since John's hometown plus many more were whisked away into the medium. There was a meeting at town hall to discuss what to do next, and everyone was invited. At least, everyone who was still alive.

"Okay," said Mayor Sullivan. "I know many of us are still grieving in the wake of that...awful tragedy." he swallowed. "There will be a funeral later. For now, we must focus on survival. First thing on our agenda: what are we going to do about the...monster attacks? Already several of our number have been forced to...play a card game with their lives at stake. Some of them have died from it. We need to do something about this. Does anyone have any suggestions?"

No one spoke.

Mr. Egbert raised his hand. All eyes turned to look at him. "I don't suppose victims could just walk away from the game?"

"No," the Mayor said, flatly. "We've attempted to rescue people from these games that way. The moment they are out of reach and out of sight of the monster they're playing against, they die."

A middle-aged woman with gray hair near the back of the auditorium spoke up then.

"What if a skilled Mage Wars Academy player gives them instructions on what cards to play in order to defeat the monster threatening them?"

"We tried that too. It had the same result, and the person helping them would fall unconscious."

John grimaced. This was starting to seem like something out of one of those horrible animes Dave liked to watch,  Yujio or something.

"We'll have to squash these monsters before they kill any more of us!" said the high school principal.

There was a murmuring of assent.

"Okay then," said the mayor. "In that case, I propose we create a local militia, and draft everyone who knows how to play the card game 'Mage Wars Academy'. All in favor?"

John was among the many to raise his hand.

"Son, do you know how to play?" Mr. Egbert asked John.

John hesitated, and nodded, but kept his hand raised anyways. Jade had taught him over pesterchum the night before.

His father sighed despondently. It was a majority. His 13-year-old son was being drafted to fight in a militia...by playing a card game.

[Sailor Vulcan]

"Motion passed," said Mayor Sullivan, striking a gavel onto his podium that no one had seen him holding a moment earlier, reminding everyone of his days working as a magician before he got into politics.

"The next thing we need to worry about is food."

This time John spoke up. "Oh, you don't need to worry about that. You can purchase captchalogue codes for a lot of stuff on the Sburb online store, including food. That's actually how we managed to get here. I used some of my starting grist (that's the in-game currency), to purchase some cruxite, and used my alchemiter to make a cruxite apple. When I took a bite of it, it transported us all here." John noticed that everyone was staring at him now, and he shrunk in on himself. He wished they would stop doing that!

"With all due respect," said Margaret Gratch, a very health-conscious old neighbor who loved cats. "I don't think any of us know what cruxite is, nor what effects it could have on a human body. We need to find out how many of us have been exposed to cruxite, what cruxite does, and whether it's beneficial or harmful in any way besides its ability to teleport us out of the path of an oncoming meteor shower."

There were many nods and murmurs of agreement throughout the auditorium.

"And we should probably also test the food from the online store for any contaminants or other abnormalities," she added as an afterthought.

Mayor Sullivan nodded and said "All in favor of food inspections and of participating in medical research? Wait, first raise your hand for food inspections, then medical research."

The vote was pretty much unanimous for both of them.

"Motion passed," said the mayor, striking the podium with his gavel. Many of the doctors and nurses attending the meeting looked pleased.

"Finally, we need to find a way of contacting the other registered Sburb players, whoever they managed to bring with them, and anyone else who might have survived."

"Just use Pesterchum!" John blurted out. People were staring at him, again. "You can contact them via pesterchum."

[Sailor Vulcan]

"Pesterchum? You mean the online chat client?" asked Amanda, who was something of an expert on computers from Canada.

"Yeah," said John. "Some parts of the internet still work, apparently. I don't know how."

Everyone sat there, stunned by the revelation, and many people then immediately opened their smart phones, discovered that they still had internet connection and began downloading the Pesterchum app, or if they already had it, set about trying to contact friends and loved ones to see if they had survived the apocalypse.

"Oh my God! It works!" shouted George Cooper, a young ex-mormon man sitting in the back row. "My wife and husband are okay!" Tears were streaming down his face.

"Um, anyways," said Mayor Sullivan, awkwardly. "Our final order of business for today is perhaps the most important. We need to find out where we are and what the hell is going on here, because all of this should be blatantly impossible. For this purpose, I recommend that we form a team of qualified researchers and explorers who will be tasked with mapping the surrounding area and investigating anything that could give us a clue about our situation. All in favor?"

Pretty much everyone raised their hands.

The mayor struck his gavel to the podium. "Motion passed. Anything else we should discuss?"

No one spoke.

"In that case, this meeting is now adjourned. Have a good afternoon everyone!"