Welcome to the idyllic town of Addersfield, located on History Island in Auradon, home of Illedale University.
Students here are children of some rather famous faces. And some have made fame in their own right, like King Ben or the Lady Mal. We’re proud to boast a diverse student culture and a rich history–
[–and that’s enough of THAT broadcast! Is this thing on? Hello? Can you hear me?
Good. I’ll warn ya right now, everybody– if you thought Auradon Prep was wild, you ain’t seen nothing yet! Illedale is bigger, meaner, and with the past not so distant to us, tensions can run pretty high around here.
‘Course, you probably know the story by now. When preparing for his coronation, King Ben declared his first royal proclamation to allow over 4 VKs from the Isle of the Lost to come to the city. After a whole showdown about good and evil, the four integrated into Auradon society pretty well, and then after drama at Cotillion, Mowgli rallied the Auradon people to fight for the disbandment of the Isle, sending the villains to rehab and their kids to Auradon Prep.
Catching you up since graduation, pretty much all of us ended up moving to Addersfield for higher education in Auradon’s system– cuz man, I gotta tell ya, it’s a lot better in Auradon than it is anywhere else. Well, ‘cept for all the evil takeovers, I guess.
But not everyone’s cut out for college itself. The nice thing about Addersfield is that it’s all a pretty tight-knit community based around the school itself. More of a college township, as it were. So some of AP’s graduates moved to town to work with a crowd they know well.
I can’t stay much longer, but don’t let the stuffy advertising fool ya about this place, folks! We’re a lot more than what the surface wants to pretend. I’d drop your application while you can if I were in your shoes! This is P. Warner, sending you right back to your regularly scheduled programming!]
–and enroll in your future today at Illedale University, where the story starts anew.
Spud blinked, frowning a little. “Like, ouch, nephew dude.” He examined his marker for a moment before going back to what he had been doing.
Azura watched Maybeck return to his seat. She paused, shaking her head, then humming and slowly pointing to the teacher. “So… he’s your uncle?”
Maybeck chuckles softly and shrugs. “Eh. Kind of. Yeah, no, I know,” he motions to himself, “But it’s kinda just convoluted. I am adopted, Nigel teaches here too and you’ll have the same reaction to him when you see him– that, oh, yeah, he’s adopted all right moment. But Uncle Spud isn’t Nigel’s biological family either. Same for Aunt Sun, Aunt Kara, or Aunt Rose– Mrs. Park, Mrs. Oracle, and Mrs. Long. They were old, old, OLD friends… ish… back in school. Kind of a pack bond thing; they all stayed close afterwards for… various reasons, so all of us kids grew up together.”
He pauses and shrugs, adding, “All of the kids were named after friends, well, yours truly excluded, like I said adopted. Example, Uncle Spud’s kids, Jackie and Hale, were named for Uncle Jake and his little sister, Aunt Haley. That’s how bonded the families have been.”
Azura tilted her head. “Okeydokey…?”
Spud blinked, looking at the marker that almost seemed to have appeared in his hand. “Woooaahh… how’d you do that?”
Azura laughed softly, covering her mouth. She shook her head, watching the exchange.
Maybeck sighs again, pinching the bridge of his nose. “I hate all of you so much, Uncle Spud. So so much.”
Shaking his head for another moment, he slowly heads back to his seat again, rolling his eyes slightly when he looks back to Azura with a shrug and a smirk.
“Ooh, New York,” Azura mused, a small wave of yellow passing through her hair. “That sounds like an interesting place. New York.” She giggled and shrugged, nodding towards a window behind her. “Oh, I’m from the Isle.”
“Where in the world is my marker?” Spud said, scratching his head with said marker he was trying to locate.
Maybeck doesn’t quite hear her answer, his head turning back to their teacher, sighing to himself and glancing back to Azura. “Sorry, hold that thought.”
He gets up abruptly and walks over, turning Spud to face him slowly, a slightly dead inside look on his face. Reaching up, he slowly takes the hand Spud had just scratched his head with, pulls the marker up slightly to stick out, and puts the hand in front of his eyes.
Azura giggled, wrinkling her nose a bit. “Maybeck. I like that.” She twirled some of her color-shifting hair in her fingers, observing him. He was definitely… interesting.
“So where are you from, Maybeck?” she asked, saying his name slowly like she was sounding it out, giggling to herself.
Maybeck smiles softly, chewing his lip for a moment. Wow, she’s pretty and he usually knows how to function around pretty people but she is just so completely different and it’s like everything he knows is just. Gone.
He sits up a bit with a small shrug at that. “New York. Far cry from Auradon, I gotta tell ya. What about you?”
Yes! Azura looked over. “Oh, thank you.” She took the pencil, smiling sweetly, resting her head on her hand. “I’m Azura.”
“I’m already so sick of you,” Michelle sighed.
Maybeck smiles softly, leaning back against his seat slightly and propping his arm on the desk. “Charmed. I’m Maybeck. Terry Maybeck, but it’s Maybeck to everyone.”
Azura glanced over at the boy, smirking lightly to herself. Okay, good. She put her mirror away. Okay. Okay. How to do this?
Michelle sighed, shaking her head. This was going to be a mess. She looked around, finding a mind to tune into to keep herself away from whatever the hell Azura was doing.
Sitting up slightly, Azura casually “accidentally” knocked her pencil off her desk, acting like she didn’t even notice that she’d dropped it. That had to get his attention and get him talking to her, right?
Maybeck blinks when the girl’s pencil drops off her desk, pausing a moment to make sure she hadn’t noticed before reaching for it himself, picking it up and quietly passing it to her with a soft, “Oh, hey, you dropped this.”
Far from normal? Michelle slowly leaned a bit forward to look at the boy, raising an eyebrow slowly. Gee, buddy, I wonder what gave you that impression.
Azura glanced at the boy again through the corner of her eye, her hair shifting between a deep red-pink and a lighter pink in slow bursts back and forth. Okay. Okay. This was going to be a problem. She didn’t know how she was going to feel about whatever this was.
The princess flipped her hair over her shoulder, pulling out her compact mirror and taking a moment to fix her lip gloss, half hoping it would get the boy’s attention.
Maybeck about snaps his pencil lead as he writes, having noticed the movement and glancing back to the girl. Oh. Oh, shit.
Oh, he’s screwed. He clears his throat a bit and sits up straighter, trying to pay attention to the front, but Mr. Spud has never really been completely there.
How the man got a teaching job, he will NEVER understand.
There was a reason that Mr. Spud & all had asked Nigel to teach Jackie how to control HER magic, after all.
Spud slowly looked at Nigel’s boy, staring at him for a moment, registering the smirk. “I’m sure you did, dude.” He shook his head, turning back to what he’d been doing. Or, at least, trying to. Where was his brain, again?
“Azura?” Michelle said, nudging her friend. “Hey, come back to earth, you know I can’t read you when you’re that far out.”
“Wha-?” Azura blinked, turning to Michelle. “Oh. Oh. Um, yeah- yeah, yeah, yeah yeah I’m fine. Yeah.” She cleared her throat, getting her pencil out of her purse. “Totally not distracted.”
“Uh huh. Neither was he.”
“Shut up.”
Maybeck wrinkles his nose at Mr. Spud a bit when the other stares at him. Charlene takes the opportunity, flustered and red-faced, to go recollect her desk and bring it back, stopping and patting at an obvious scuff where the desk had made impact before pulling her desk back in place.
Shaking his head, Finn smirks weakly at Charlene. “Think you got it?”
She punches his arm in response, though there’s a smile on her face. Maybeck rolls his eyes and shakes his head to himself, picking up his pencil from off of his desk and turning back to face the front slowly, stealing another glance to the girl. Wow, wow, WOW she was pretty. Oh, boy. And she was f a r from normal, too. This was gonna be… a lot, wasn’t it?
“And really I cannot think of what could be more frabjous than a wonderfully wonderful cup of tea in the rosy red rose garden,” Azura said, her hair shimmering in various shades of pink and gold.
Michelle rolled her eyes, chuckling softly. “Makes me wonder how there’s people who don’t know who your parents are.”
Azura giggled and sat at her desk. She shrugged lightly, blinking and looking over towards the abrupt noise and madness and c-
Oh.
The imp blinked, transfixed by the sight of the boy, her hair turning a solid red-pink. Michelle raised an eyebrow, gently tapping her friend on the shoulder.
Spud looked over at the table that had gone flying, blinking rapidly at it for a moment. “Woah.” He looked towards where it had come from… realizing who was there. Why was he not surprised? He shook his head a bit. “Everything okay over there, dudes?”
Maybeck clears his throat awkwardly. Oh, boy. Oh, she was… she was pretty. He quietly forces himself to tear his eyes away and back towards the mess Charlene had made of things.
Charlie slowly lowers her hands. “I thought I saw a spider!”
Maybeck tries to keep the smirk off his face.
…he fails, but he tried!
