#tkdbk au

[dorothyofozhospital]

"Attention all students! Attention all students! Effective immediately, new student Dorothy Gale will be joining Vagastrom house! Effective immediately, new student Dorothy Gale will be joining Vagastrom house!"

The painting continues to report the message and Dorothy grimaces. It's so loud and obnoxious, and they're drawing attention to her. She tugs at her uniform, huffing at all the yellow-she HATES it. It's the color of the stupid yellow brick road path her grandfather had in the children's ward, it's supposed to help kids on the path to recovery and encourage them since you were allowed to walk further on it the more you improved.

She never improved. The yellow pathway just sat there, taunting her.

At least the ceremony gave her some touches of red to her outfit, but the overwhelming colors were black and yellow. God it was depressing. Why did she get put in a house with one of the colors she hated the most. Not the absolute most, but there's no green house. She thinks. She hopes.

"Do we have to do that?" Professor Dante vaguely nods, "I hate it."

"I understand you hate a lot of things, but like most of them it's a process of beaurocracy. You understand that, don't you?"

She scowls. Of course she does. Beaurocracy is why she was locked up in the first place, and then locked up more, and now moved to a completely different country altogether. When she'd come in Professor Hyde had ooh'ed and ahh'ed at her Japanese, how he thought an American would be much worse at it. Like she had anything better to do with her time after public schooling was denied to her? Her tutors used to say she was unnerving. But they were accustomed to 'normal' children. And the institute liked to remind her constantly: she's not normal. Most ghouls form in their teen years to 20s. She's been blowing up shit with her stigma since she was a child.

She guesses maybe that's not normal.

"Let's introduce you to Mido and get you settled...."

"Yeah, sure...."

[dorothyofozhospital]

Oh, there it was, the look; she hadn't explained that, had she? "I'm...immune to fire," Dorothy explains quickly, fetching the rack for the bacon, "I don't know if other ghouls have similar immunities, but that's mine."

The grease pops and sizzles as she transfers it, flicking onto her skin painfully; it can't hurt her in any meaningful way, but it's still hot and deeply unpleasant. "Anyways, whoever else you want to cook for probably doesn't have the same immunity as me so if you're going to cook this back at your own dorm later, you need to be careful, Buddy. If anyone else wants to cook with you, too..." She trails off, "Well, just remember to be careful."

Towa has never had a great relationship with food. He didn’t hate it, he just…didn’t need it. Even so, he still knew the basics of cooking – it’s a skill everyone should have, after all. Except, it wasn’t a skill, not for him anyway. Normally Towa wouldn’t think twice about this kind of thing, but after last night, he started to wonder if he should worry about his abilities (or lack thereof) in the kitchen. 

You see, that night it was his turn to cook (something new that they were trying out in the Jabberwock dorm), and he decided to make the one thing he really knew how to cook: Porridge. No it wasn’t a filling meal for dinner, but again, Towa doesn’t need food. Plus, he figured if the other two were really hungry, they’d just suck it up and eat it. So when Ren outright refused to touch his meal, and Haru pretended to like it even though he’d spit it out into a napkin when he thought Towa wasn’t looking, he knew he had to make a change. He hardly ever felt shame, but last night was particularly humbling for Towa. 

And so that’s how he ended up in his current spot – sitting on the kitchen counters of the Mystery Diner and kicking his feet idly as he watched the chef anomaly attempt to make something that vaguely resembled food. Personally, Towa thought he was doing a great job, but again, what does he know about food or cooking? He only ever ate plants and flowers for God’s sake. The poor anomaly looked absolutely terrified though, constantly looking over its shoulder as if it were waiting for Towa to strike at any moment. He just had that effect on most anomalies, it seemed. But the chef would have to put up with Towa’s antics, because he wasn’t going to leave until he learned how to properly cook a meal.

[ask-doctor-isami]

Mun is a long time rper with....let's just say a number of other rp blogs, and the urge to either bring in some of them or make TKDBK AUs for them does increase knowing how great everyone in this community is. (Top consideration is actually a squid girl Old One who presents herself as a 'magical girl' bc she's kinda a weeb atm)

But this mun also doesn't know how people would respond to that. I'd be interested in hearing your takes on this idea

[dorothyofozhospital]

Dorothy moves into Vagastrom and looks at her closet with a frown. They brought all the clothes her grandfather sent with her from the hospital. It's not much.

Scrubs. Blue dresses bc her mother only ever dressed her in blue, for some reason. More scrubs. White and mint green and lots and lots of blue. Nothing with laces, ribbons, ties, zippers, or buttons. Everything about her limited available wardrobe screams "I just got out of the psyche ward". Her shoes? Canvas. Slippers.

She likes blue well enough, but not for the main color the way her mother always envisioned for her. She wants something red. Less yellow. Absolutely no green.

Green was Oz Rumin's color.

She'd been practically living in muted color scrubs most of her adolescent life though, who the hell does she ask for help with clothes? All of the other ghouls seem to be men. Most of the men she knew back in the hospital didn't know shit about fashion. Every nurse she had wore the same scrubs and lobster hair clip for their messy buns. A nurse with a super precise outfit probably didn't last long at the hospital, in her experience. Seeing a well made up woman (or man, whatever, it's the 21st century) was like a red flag. They either broke down quickly or they left.

So?

Who does she ask?

Not Alan.

......Leo doesn't seem to like her.

[dorothyofozhospital]

Will you tell us about your artifact? Shoes are a convenient and unique one--do you remember how you got them? Artifacts apparently choose their wielders themselves; did you have any sort of unique experience when you were chosen? Do you know how to use them? How did you learn? Do you always wear them?

Oh, the shoes? Um, they were a birthday gift from my grandfather when I was....14? 15? I dunno about weird experiences, I put them on and they just felt ....right. Like they were supposed to be mine. I was supposed to have them. They're mine.

Yeah, I've practiced a bit over the years, tho not as much as I'd like. They'd let me go out every so often, but I wasn't allowed to stray too far. So I guess I don't know how far exactly I can teleport with them. I was never allowed more than 500 feet.

And yeah, I usually wear them, they're my shoes. They fit me perfectly like literally nothing else, they're so comfortable. Water-proof, stain proof, and as long as I'm wearing them, fire proof. That last one is important.

I don't know where they came from, my grandpa has access to a lot of weird stuff. He said he had a feeling I could make use of the shoes, but he didn't say anything else. He'd....tell me if it was dangerous, right?

[dorothyofozhospital]

It was something they were required to do for me they didn't have to do for any other kid, and since I was the director's granddaughter their jobs were on the line for not doing it. And it was extra work, I guess? Making sure one child out of like forty didn't get cutlery or go certain places or touch certain things.

Okay, thanks, Jiro. I studied suuuper hard to learn the language, but some kanji and honorifics and naming convention still slip me by. Just using people's personal names just makes me rude or something, and obviously American but what else am I supposed to to?

Hi, um, Kirisaki-san, right? I'm Dorothy Gale, the new Vagastrom ghoul. Professor Dante said I needed to check in with Mortkranken for a physical but I'm gonna be real with you, your captain...scares me a bit....

@dorothyofozhospital

Oh, so you're just here to schedule the appointment? I can take care of that for you. You don't need to worry too much about Yuri. He's more bark than bite. If you're still against the idea of seeing Yuri, I can just do it myself. A physical is nothing too complex for me to handle on my own.

[dorothyofozhospital]

Apparently I don't need to age Dorothy down for Tokyo Debunker at all.

Mun was confused about the age range for Darkwick, but also apparently I thought Dorothy was in her mid to late 20s.

She's 20.

She's actually already the perfect age for Darkwick as a first year. Although this does also mean she's definitely been a ghoul way longer than anyone else on campus. (Instead of like 10 years, closer to 20, she's been a ghoul longer than she hasn't.)

The Institute swears they wanted her transferred for her own safety since the incident with Oz. Dorothy isn't so certain. Far as she knows, they've never had direct contact or observed a ghoul that made their pact so young and has effectively grown up AS a ghoul. Experienced puberty AS a ghoul. Usually people who become ghouls are already physically established and done with their growth before they make a pact.

They want to watch her. They want blood samples. They want to put her under a microscope. She has no illusions about this. She's not even entirely convinced they believe she caused the explosion that Oz created, the whole thing might be an excuse to get her isolated from her family in another country, in a facility the Institute alone controls. And if she steps out of line, she could get locked up again. It hangs precariously over her head.

[dorothyofozhospital]

Someone suggests that Dorothy talk to Romeo if she wants fashion advice.

"The...Italian mafia-looking guy?" "Yeah, he'll probably be super excited to dress a female ghoul, right?" "...........I get the feeling he'll charge me for a 'consultation'."

Not that she didn't have money. Her grandfather had 'helpfully' transferred money into her account for her first independent stay, uhhh, ever, and promised to set up an allowance every month. The numbers were not small. She didn't know what to do with it all. She didn't know what to do with any of it.

She has a cell phone now she barely knows how to use. And it has access to social media and online shopping. Neither of which she knows how to use either.

And now someone is suggesting she just walk up to a reportedly unapproachable ghoul and ask for fashion advice.

Sure, he looks well dressed, his skin is flawless, and his hair looks soft and silky. (She wants to pet it.) But he always has such a foul expression on his face. He's always yelling. Dante insisted he's more bark than bite, but she isn't sure.

[dorothyofozhospital]

To add onto the issues of Dorothy effectively being raised in the psyche ward of her grandpa's hospital, how many of her problems were put off as being a psych patient? Especially considering she was the only ghoul for 99% of her time there and the staff mostly didn't know about it?

She sets a fire or accidentally burns something and some unaware nurse lectures her for playing with matches because what if she burns herself! (She's confused, she literally can't burn herself with her own fire. Also she didn't steal matches.) She gets mad and something explodes, get an instinctive slap or lecture for messing with things, that's dangerous you could have hurt someone!

She didn't do it on purpose!

How many doctors or nurses thought this kid was a pyromaniac? And an impulsive liar? She steals matches and lighters, and sets fires, and then lies about it?!? She apparently blew up half of her school but swears she didn't use a bomb. LIKELY STORY. Kid is troubled and made a bomb at 8. They don't think she should ever be allowed back in society if she's got this many issues.

Oz Rumin is a terrible person, but when he arrives he's the first ghoul Dorothy has ever seen, and when she says she just used her powers for all this he believes her and asks how her powers work. Even offers to explain his own powers.

It's the first time she hasn't been called crazy for trying to say she didn't do any of it on purpose.

[dorothyofozhospital]

Most likely, Dorothy's grandfather was trying to run a theory that if you had a volatile ghoul (as most ghouls are) if you treat their mental and psychological issues, you can handle them more easily. So by treating the issues his granddaughter had psychologically, he hoped he could help her gain control over her abilities better than literally locking her up would ever do. (Probably what the Institute wanted when they found out an unsupervised 8 year old ghoul with FIRE POWERS destroyed half of a school.)

For a while he was probably even convinced it was working, and when a second ghoul was discovered and brought in, he tried it again. There's just one small problem with that.

Oz Rumin is a sociopath.

Or rather, diagnostically, he has borderline personality disorder with very strong sociopathic tendencies. And his stigma isn't tied to his mental health like Dorothy's is. (he's also not had his powers as long.) Basically treating his issues doesn't make him less dangerous like it would for Dorothy.

All in all, her grandfather sincerely tried for his ghoul patients, out of a real desire to help them in ways he knew the Institute wouldn't. It just didn't work out the way he'd hoped.

[dorothyofozhospital]

Someone: why do you hate green so much?

Dorothy: bc the goddamn PRINCE of the EMERALD CITY went ahead and framed me for blowing up the hospital! And now I'm in another country because of him!

Them: i was gonna joke about the color green killing your brother but jeeze

[dorothyofozhospital]

In retrospect, I considered how well Dorothy might have done in other houses...

Sinostra: her favorite color is red, but she hates gambling, games of chance, and prefers skill over luck and probably wouldn't have been happy with the vibe

Jabberwock: after so long indoors the wide open safari might actually trigger agoraphobia she didn't know she had; she likes animals but she may not be ready for the anomalous animals yet

Mortkranken: she hates doctors, next

Obscuary: aside from not being a supernatural creature or having a curse, the mysterious nature of Obscuary just doesn't fit her blunt nature

Hotarubi: she doesn't consider herself much of an artist, poet, singer, or anything creative

Frostheim: actually might have worked well for her, with her family connections and relatively comfortable upbringing in spite of her circumstances but GOD does she hate gossips

.....so yeah, I guess Vagastrom really is the best place for her.

[dorothyofozhospital]

"The Clash?" No one mentioned that at all when she was admitted. "What was that, some kind of battle royale?" It was a gift from Oz, a book she definitely wasn't supposed to have, but she absolutely consumed cover to cover.

This school was a lot more complicated than she'd thought. "Shit...this school has some issues, huh? I guess it's better than my old one, but still..."

Sho? Weird question, but like...how old were you when you became a ghoul? You don't have to give me specific numbers or whatever, a general range would help. I'm just...comparing some things.

@dorothyofozhospital

"Uh...." Sho has to pause to think. "I think sometime in middle school? Maybe first year of high school? I don't really remember."

[dorothyofozhospital]

"Wait, Alan has never read Peter Pan? Ever?" She's bewildered; she thought fairy tales like that were tradition for kids! Or maybe it's not obligatory here since it's not a Japanese story....

[dorothyofozhospital]

Leo: lemme guess, "you're not like other girls"

Dorothy, thinking about girls in her past: no, I'm pretty sure I'm just like the other girls, why?

[dorothyofozhospital]

All this to prompt an image i had of like other Vagastrom students trying to harass or hit on the new FIRST female ghoul and Alan tries to step in.

"Thanks but no need." Dorothy lays the guy out with a single punch bc she grew up being banned from using her stigma. (even tho it's easier and would discourage people more effectively) "I'm in Vagastrom, too. But again, thanks."