Rika's head swam. The last thing she remembered was being led outside. The smell of the salt-water had hit her before the sight of the docked seaplane did, and she was already kicking and clawing at the guards dragging her out of the van by the time she felt the sunlight on her skin. There was no way she'd let them take her anywhere near the water. However, a sharp little prick to her neck from behind took the decision out of her hands. Her eyes had rolled back into her head, and she'd gone limp in the arms of her escorts.

Pulling herself together as she remembered what happened, Rika sat bolt upright, starting to panic at the thought of being over such a large body of water as the ocean. However, as she took in her surroundings she calmed herself a little. She seemed to have been deposited, quite unceremoniously, on a couch in the middle of what looked like a college common room. At her feet was a duffel bag with "R. INOUE" stamped on it's side. A quick rummage revealed that all it contained were a few pairs of her underwear and a few hygiene essentials. She frowned, dropping the bag back to the floor and sulking a little. Other than what was in the bag, all she had with her was what she was wearing; a grungy old pair of greasy cut-off jean-shorts that she only wore when working on her bike, and her favourite camo-print tank-top; the outfit she'd been wearing when she was arrested. She hadn't expected them to be sent with her, but that now she'd confirmed it she began to feel herself choke up a little when she didn't find her biker leathers in her bag. But then, what use for biker leathers would she have if she didn't have her bike?

Rika wrinkled her nose and composed herself. She knew enough delinquents who'd been stuck in them to know that you didn't show signs of weakness in juvenile training schools. Even though they were more lenient than prisons and provided correction education, she'd still be stuck in here with a tough crowd. She was lucky; if she'd been a year older she'd probably just been put into the general penal system like her brother...

She put thoughts of her brother aside for now. There'd be time for that later. No doubt the other "students" here would be sizing her up already, and she decided she'd probably be better off if she did the same. Work out the pecking order and what-have-you. She leaned back against the sofa, resting her arms across it's low back as casually as she could, and lifting one of her legs to rest her ankle on the opposite knee. Confident body language; open, with no sign of cowering. She leant her head forwards a bit, feigning fatigue and letting her short hair droop in front of her eyes. This would allow her to check things out without making any direct eye contact with anyone.

Rika furrowed her brow. This was an awfully nice common room for a correctional school. There weren't any cigarette burns on the couch, no graffiti on the walls, and all the electrical equipment was not only still here but also in full working order. This was nothing like what she'd heard from the other gang members. She steeled herself; after all, it wasn't the surroundings that she should be paying attention to, but the other delinquents...

Just then she heard the noises of feet gently walking across the floor as one of the doors opened up and coming in was a girl, about 18 years old with blonde hair and Greenish eyes, wearing the uniform for the school as she was holding some kind of comic or something, though it looked Japanese styled like a manga as the woman was reading it intently before she lifted her head and noticed Rika and blinked her eyes.

"Oh a new student, hello there, welcome to Shokushu school, I'm Selena Cameron, it's nice to see you," The Woman said smiling brightly at her as she approached her.

"May I know your name Miss?" She asked Rika looking at her calmly bookmarking and closing her manga book for now as she looked at the punkish appearance of Rika with curious eyes.

Rika leant backwards further, tilted her head as she did, actually managing to look down down her nose at the girl standing over her. A blonde girl, most likely some sort of westerner. American maybe? She couldn't place her accent, though. And what was with the manga? She was being very polite, which was odd. Not at all aggressive. Maybe this wasn't what passed for polite where she came from. Or maybe this was the queen bee, and Rika was being given a chance to fall in in line with no fuss, rather than with a beating to show her who was boss. She hadn't approached Rika with any of her underlings, either. She was confident. But then, she was a little bigger than Rika. A little chunkier, too. Perhaps she thought the weight advantage would tip the scales in her favour if things came to blows. Maybe she thought Rika could be pushed around because she was Asian. She held back a sneer, maintaining her nonchalant expression. Plenty of her brother's cronies had thought ill of her due to her smaller stature and gender. And that had never ended well for them.

But it would be better to play things cool until she was sure of this girl's intentions. If she did have her underlings close-by, things could go badly for Rika if she made the first move. Yes, better to play things cool, for now.

"Inoue," she said, not batting an eyelid or giving anything else away. Instead, she went on the offensive.

"What are you in for?"

"In for?" Selena asked with an innocent tone slightly british accent, "I'm not in for anything? Shokushu is a school for everyone, I came here cause it had an impressive resume of classes that I could apply for in my future," Selena said with a soft friendly smile, she was a bit of a slender figure, and was showing posture as well as she chatted with Rika.

"Why would you assume I was here for something bad?" Selena asked confused as to why Rika thought that way, as anyone else she knew in this school came here for similar reason she did as she looked at Rika.

She couldn't resist.

"Well, you've bleached your hair blonde," Rika said quite plainly, "so you're either trying to stand out or you're some sort of delinquent."

She gestured at the manga she was carrying, "Plus no respectable person reads comics at our age, so you can't be well-adjusted."

While waiting for a reaction, Rika furrowed her brow, looking around the room quickly before peering back up at the taller girl. Surely this was some kind of joke? Maybe she was being hazed. But having said that, this place did seem real nice. And this stranger seemed quite well-to-do, with her talk of "classes" and "resumes".

The young delinquent cocked an eyebrow, and allowed herself to smile ever-so-slightly. Perhaps there'd been a mix-up, and she'd been sent to some sort of finishing school rather than a correctional one. If everyone here was like this girl, Rika would have an easy time. Hell, things might even be comfortable.

The smile dropped, replaced by a lip-curling sneer. No, she wasn't here to enjoy herself. Not while her brother had gone to prison for the same "crimes".

She cast another glance at Selena, still not quite sure what to make of her...

"It's not a comic it's manga, and my hair is natural," Selena said with a pout as she looked at Rika putting it away into a small bag on her back,

"This school isn't some...delinquent center you must be talking about, it's a high class education place...at least I think so, though I have seem some of the girls here acting like they just got raped by something...but that can't be right cause pretty much anything here is female, the teachers at least the ones I've seen, all the students and the Prefects and Head Girls are Female too...it's, weird sometimes," Selena said looking around to see if anyone else was around.

Rika frowned a little, "You know "manga" is just Japanese for "comics", right?"

She decided that this wasn't an avenue of conversation worth pursuing, however.

"Ignoring the fact that rape isn't a crime exclusively committed by men for a moment," and that you seem to be insane, "the fact that I've been sent here as punishment for a string of gang-related offences means that by definition this institution is a correctional facility, and not the "high class education place" you seem to think it is. My very presence here is proof of that..."

Sighing, Rika began to consider how much of what Selena was saying about this place being a respected institution was true. From all appearances, it seemed true. You know, except for Selena and her rambling about assaults. Maybe she'd been sent to some sort of school for girls with social problems or something. Perhaps she'd been mistaken for someone with emotional issues, and transferred to one of those facilities for...

Urgh, whatever, she thought to herself, feeling herself start to get wound up. If this was some sort of mad-house, then she was worse off than if she was in a juvenile rehabilitation facility. At least with other delinquents, Rika would've have known what to expect from her "classmates", and would've been able to at least somewhat predict how others might act around her.

She cocked her eyebrow, looking Selena up and down again. Maybe she should test the waters a bit more.

"Cameron," Rika said firmly, leaning forwards with her elbows on her knee, linking her hands together at the fingers and maintaining steady eye contact so that the other girl knew she was serious, "I want some smokes. Go get me some."

Selena blinked her eyes then frowned a tiny bit before she ran a hand through her hair slightly with a sigh.

"Sorry, I don't know where anything of the sort is, and the Head Girls or Prefects would be over anyone's butt for doing anything like that, I've seen girls get sent away for things like being late for class, or bad mouthing teachers..and they seem to vanish for a few hours...looking weird.." Selena said.

"Sorry that I can't help ya, but I'm sure someone around here well maybe sells things like smokes under the radar, but for now I got to go back to the dorms and get some rest," Selena said before she began to walk away, "if I was you I'd find your dorm and uniform, this school is rather strict about that," Selena said as she headed out of the room.

Rika scoffed a little, leaning back against the couch again as the other girl walked away. Clearly this Selena was too uptight and/or straight-laced to be of an use or interest to her. And while she seemed like she could easily be the sort of push-over a seasoned delinquent could lean on and extort money and items from, she also seemed a bit strange, a bit delusional. No, Rika decided, someone like her has enough problems without me picking on her.

Sighing wearily, she looked around the room again to see if any other students were about. She was being to worry about what she would do for company if everyone here was like Selena...

Hold up, the cavalcade of 'people with emotional issues' ain't done yet.

Perched on a table in one of the dimmer corners of the room, a small, scrawny woman has her legs drawn up to her chest, and a terrifying book nearly as thick as it is wide balanced over them. She's been picking at it listlessly for some time now, with something of the attitude of a sick person confronted with a delicious three-course dinner, and the altercation between the two other students provides a welcome distraction. Order versus disorder, much? Well, good luck to them. She hoped things didn't go to badly for them, but at the mention of rape, she hurriedly looks away, back to the unappetisingly prolix pages of the Dead White Male's magnum opus.

When Rika begins looking around, she locks eyes from behind slightly tinted glasses with the other young woman and smiles. It doesn't reach her eyes - hell, it doesn't even reach all the way across her mouth. She's wearing a long, somewhat conservative skirt, a blouse with a few desultory gestures towards school uniform, and her hair is bound up in a dark headscarf. Her skin is olive-dark, and a little puffy and blotchy around her face.

'Minutes after you're waking up, and already looking for something to smoke? Well, at least you know where your priorities lie. You've got some interesting expectations about this place, too, if you don't mind me saying.'

OoC: Mind if I butt in? The door was open ...

Rika turned to see who was addressing her. This one had a book too, but it was something that looked a little less reprehensible for a grown woman to be reading. It was a start, at least. Her body language was withdrawn, and she'd seemed to have picked an out-of-the-way corner of the room to read in. Rika recognised her "type" straight away, although she knew appearances could be deceiving. If this was some sort of asylum or sanatorium, then it might be the quiet ones she'd have to keep an eye out for. She considered that this girl hadn't spoken up until "Blonde English" had left. Maybe there was a pecking order in place after all. Rika also considered it worth noting that the bookworm hadn't gone with a standard or formal greeting, instead getting right to the point she wanted to make. She liked that, it made her seem more like a real person and less like a confused bundle of in-grained niceties, manners and high parental expectations.

Thumbing the belt-loops on the front of her shorts as she did, Rika got to her feet and casually ambled over to the other girl, with perhaps a little less of the "macho" posturing she'd displayed earlier. She stood by the edge of the table, not sitting down yet, but taking a little time to stretch. She hadn't noticed until she'd stood up and started walking, but she seemed to be sore from the trip. It probably hadn't been a very pleasant or comfortable flight here.

"I don't fly well," Rika said plainly, but lying through her teeth, "and a cigarette would take the edge off. I can do without, though."

She looked down at the other girl, while tilting and rotating her head to try and work the stiffness out of her neck. Whereas Rika's shorts and tank-top showed off her pleasantly toned arms and legs, this girl's outfit was quite modest, and hid her figure. Rika silently approved. Modesty was an admirable trait, and she regretted that she'd been caught in an outfit she only wore when at home. In particular, she noted the girl's long skirt. When the time came for Rika to inevitably get her own uniform, she decided it would be this girl she'd get to help make the arrangements...

"You heard what I told Cameron, and it's hardly something one would lie about. If I'm here following a criminal conviction to be rehabilitated, and she's here," she said, jerking her thumb back over her shoulder, "to study as a prestigious school, then clearly one of us is in the wrong place, or being misled."

Rika raised an eyebrow almost sceptically at Morgan, "What about you?"

Morgan had eyes only for the other woman's eyes. They seemed to flicker about the room, constantly roving about looking for threats or prey, trying to find their place in the world. She had seen that look on her classmates back in Isfahan, on the faces of those who tried to assess her and categorise the threat she posed or the ways that she could be undercut, the best path to a particularly cutting jibe. But with this woman - Rika - never stopped looking, never seeming to come to a judgement or satisfying herself that the coast was clear. Interesting.

'Oh, I don't know about the weirdness of Cameron and that lot. I'm sure she - and rather a few people here, it seems - have their reasons, reasonable or not, for acting as they do. The fact that we're on an island, cut off from the rest of the world (and cigarettes, and alcohol, and boys) can't help, though - people seem to be a little bit on edge.'

She tips herself off the edge of the table, landing on her feet with a wince, and turns to the other woman.

'As for me? Late of the glorious Islamic Republic of Iran, with all of its wonderful expectations about how a woman my age and parental status ought to conduct herself, how to act. I wasn't sent here, though; I came here to escape, to study linguistics, on what I thought was an isolated island paradise, some retreat for scholars. To be honest, I don't think any of us are in the right place.

Morgan, by the way. Good to meet you, Rika.'

Her hand stirs to shake the other's hand, but only an inch, before the gesture's stifled, and she replaces it in a sleeve.

Rika didn't seem too convinced, "The facility's staff would have access to the cigarettes and alcohol," she said, almost as if she'd decided that, "and most likely some enterprising young girl has already sourced a supplier for such "contraband", whether for personal use or to sell to the..."

The delinquent furrowed her brow for a fraction of a second, still weighing up Morgan as she spoke.

"...less cleaning-living students."

Rika listened to the other girl's introduction, looking a little puzzled at a few details, and nodded politely in response to her greeting. She couldn't but notice the flash of pain when Morgan got down off the table, nor the awkward twitchy behaviour when she introduced herself. In response, she took a few steps away from her, folding her arms across her chest and leaning back against the wall, crossing one ankle over the other as she did, all as nonchalantly as ever.

"Then there's definitely something crooked somewhere in this situation," she stated matter-of-factly, "and it may be as simple as my elder brother pulling some strings to get me put somewhere more comfortable than a juvenile training school."

Her expression softened for the merest moment as she considered that, but it quickly hardened again, and Rika turned back to lock her gaze firmly on Morgan's.

"But where-ever I am clearly isn't part of the Japanese penal system. And you "thought" this was a scholastic retreat. You've been here longer than me, tell me where you think we are."

She brushed the underside of her nose with the underside of her index finger, before taking a somehow-aggressive sniff as she tilted her head backwards a bit. She looked down her nose at Morgan, arching her brow and pursing her lips quite threateningly as she spoke.

"While we're at it, tell me who's been picking on you."

'Oh, it's not the Japanese penal system, I can tell you that much - it advertised itself as a finishing school or university. It is that, I think, but from my venerable thirty-six hours on the premises, I get the impression that it's an institution that's fallen through the cracks somewhat, as far as oversight, scrutiny, and just what happens to its students is concerned. Beyond that - who the fuck knows. I think we'd be best off chasing down Ms. Cameron or another long-timer if we wanted to find out more. I don't know if it's crooked in quite the way you might be hoping, though - any interesting things to smoke or drink would have to come in by sea, on the plane, or be made on the premises by some enterprising girl with a dearth of 'clean living'.

A good phrase. Morgan's certainly enjoying the panoply of allusions to a dark criminal past, some sort of gritty post-cyberpunk Artful Dodger, no doubt. She's still unsure as to how much of this is pretention and posturing - but then chides herself for her bourgeois, suburban assumptions about others' lives. Maybe that has been Rika's life so far.

'Back in Isfahan we'd often find ways and means of securing that kind of stuff, but they usually revolved around the sundry corruptions of various authority and parental figures. I don't know what their reaction to that would be here, but I'm guessing that the Shokushu Board might run a fairly tight ship. My bags were searched, I'm sure of it. Yours? As to the second source - if people are brewing up moonshine, they're hiding it well. They'd have to.'

She walks to the window, with a slightly hobbling, bow-legged gait, taking in the view of the college grounds, and the island and sea beyond it. Yesterday had been beautiful, clear skies limned with green and orange fire by the impossibly long-lived sunset; today, only the ashes of those flames remain, with the horizon deepening from a light silver to a darker gunmetal. Truly a day to stay inside, and to talk. Morgan turns, meeting the blunt, aggressive question with a stare of her own.

'Picking on me? Well, damn, but you just found me out. It's something of a long story, and you'll despise me for coming up with such a coy evasion, but let's just say that I thought some things about myself before I came here, things that have given me direction my whole life, that I've been rather quickly and violently disabused of when coming here. Who did it … who did it isn't really important, it's something … it's something I'll have to work out on my own, maybe with her, I think. There. That suggestive and dramatic enough for you? And what about you? You seem awfully convinced that you're in here for something. What? If you don't mind me asking.

She flashes Rika a fuller smile, enjoying this arch self-dramatisation and self-pity. It's not either, really, and the bruising and scratches under her long clothes attest to that, but she can pretend that it's nothing but light drama, and, in doing so, maybe she can make it into that.

Rika frowned a little. Morgan seemed to have her head on straight, so it was unfortunate that she'd been here less than two days longer than Rika. She didn't much like the sound of what she had to say, though. With her being dumped here following a conviction, and the other girls seemingly lured here, it was looking more and more suspicious. Mostly, it was her own presence here that worried her, as well how skittish the English girl had been and how Morgan appeared to have been beaten since her arrival. The latter facts could be explained away easily enough; people are weird, and people are bad. But Rika felt like she stood out like a sore thumb amongst these girls. If this really was a high-end and exclusive finishing school on a tropical island, her presence here made little sense. She bit her lip to stop herself panicking, when she realised that there would be no way out of here that didn't involve travelling over or via the ocean.

Morgan continued talking about cigarettes and alcohol, but in truth Rika really didn't care about them all that much. Telling Cameron to get her some "smokes" had been little more than an exercise in pushing and testing the girl, to get a measure of her. Then Morgan talked some more, this time about the beating she'd received, and how she was dealing with it. Morgan talked a lot, actually. Verbose, in fact, if that was the right word. Quite the opposite to Rika, either way. Regardless, she didn't seem particularly interested in telling Rika who'd beaten her up. That was fine. Maybe if it was worse next time Rika would push a little harder. Maybe not.

"Sometimes it's better not to talk about things," she said, before Morgan brought the subject of the conversation around to Rika. Her upper lip twitched into an irritated sneer when she mentioned how Rika seemed "awfully convinced" about her situation, and started tensing up her fingers reflexively. But perhaps Morgan wouldn't catch that, given that Rika currently had her arms crossed over her chest.

"My brother ran a gang, so I joined," she stated, in her standard reserved, almost deadpan manner, "Eventually the gang got too big for the authorities to handle, so the police focused their attentions on my brother in an attempt to deal with it more efficiently."

She shrugged listlessly, exhaling loudly through her nose as she did, not letting her expression give anything away if she could help it.

"They convicted him on a string of charges, from possession and theft all the way up to assault. They tried to pin a murder on him too, but they couldn't make it stick. So he was spared the death penalty. But they wanted him to suffer, so they tried me as an accomplice to get at him. And because I'm under 20, I wasn't handled by the general penal system."

She shrugged again, "So here I am."