Fandom High Dormitories

After all the candy and sugary treats devoured when most of the island's inhabitants were transformed into children, Raven was very careful to provide a lot of healthy snacks for this meeting of the Reserves. There were fruits and veggies and whole grain goodness, but in the end she'd caved enough to provide some sweets as well.

"We are celebrating the end of the semester," Raven said to begin the meeting. "We have survived not only our classes, but everything that Fandom -- and our own worlds -- have had to throw at us. We thought we would take this time to take a break from the stress of finals and relax among friends, though perhaps we can also speak of what we have faced over the past several months and what we learned from it, about ourselves and our companions and our abilities."

"I think the most important thing I learned," Tara began, "and this might sound cheesy, is -- trust yourself and trust your friends. I've seen people do amazing things. Things they, they would have sworn they couldn't do if you'd asked. But stress people out enough, and bam. Magic happens. Not just literal magic, either."

"But there are always consequences to your actions," Karla added, sounding a little subdued. "And those consequences can have much further-reaching effects than what you might expect. Be careful of those around you, especially your friends. Just because they are likely to forgive you doesn't mean you have the right to treat them poorly, even for the sake of the 'greater good.'"

"Sometimes you owe your friends more than that," Dolf piped up. "Sometimes the 'greater good' is your friends, and sometimes you need to just look out for them to get the right things done." Not that he had any idea what Karla might have been referring to, but it had been his experience. "So we want to talk about it, and help make this part of the preserve a nicer place for today. Just to talk about the things we have done this year, and what they mean. Because everything means something, and everything we fight for is something important."

The boy was really ridiculously earnest.

"For my part, I have learned much the same as Tara has said," Raven said. "No matter how frightening something is, no matter how ashamed you are of something that is happening to you, you should not keep it to yourself and deal with it alone. The friendships forged in Fandom are strong, and our unique abilities and upbringings may bring valued insight into one another's problems. None of us are alone here."

She smiled and looked around at each of the students attending the meeting. "And if you have any words of advice for new students that will be arriving in Fandom, we would like to hear those as well."

[Co-written with the fabulous glacial_witch, life_inshadow, and swordsandsoccer.]