THEME: The History of Southern Cross Island Part 2
As the century turned, the concentrated, emotion-rich people of Southern Cross Island had founded several academies on the island - a strange resonance of the emotional dynamo that existed on the island, for surely there is nothing more rich in emotional turmoil than a school.
The three most widely-known were Southern Cross Academy, Fuuka Academy, and Seiyo Academy. All of these were quite close together, built around a series of hills in the center of the island. Southern Cross Academy was the oldest of the academies - publicly rather benign, really, its main claims to fame were a somewhat infamously elite drama club and the honor of being named for the Island itself. Of course, Southern Cross was far from mundane; for deep in the caves beneath the Academy there lay the slumbering Cybodies and the Magic Association task force that kept their seals as tight as they possibly could. The resurgence of magic powers led the Association to occasional difficulty, but the Cybodies were a dire threat, and they were well-armed to defend them.
The slumbering Cybodies drew to them the Marked families, who wielded some small shred of their patrons' immeasurable power. The greatest of these was the Maidens, who in that time were able to live openly; and the Shindo clan, whose family bore the crest of the Cybody King....and his curse, that any who awakened his power would soon fall into a deep sleep, and never awaken.
Conversely, Fuuka Academy was a vast, gorgeous campus nestled into the rolling hills of the island. Fuuka was an elite academy - a school of, for, and by the rich and powerful, to attain greatness and instruct their children in the ways of the mighty. In many ways it was designed to bring the Japanese up in the ways of the West. However, the Kazahana family who ran it seemed to have some other priority, and frequently stretched scholarships out seemingly at random, bending their phenomenal wealth to the task. Fuuka's major landmarks were the Crystal Shrine, a large greenhouse sanctuary in the central gardens; and the school library, a vast, university-level repository of knowledge known less for its volumes of wisdom and more for the mystery of its foyer, where a massive clock sat, recording the passage of something other than time. Also, an on-campus chapel was well-maintained by missionaries, although not too many students were of the persuasion to attend. Secretly, beneath the school lay yet another of the island's secrets, for in a cavern beneath the Crystal Palace, there lay the crystallized bride of the Obsidian Lord, awaiting the day that the next Festival would set her free...as well as release the terrible power of her groom.
Finally, in some ways Seiyo Academy was the most benign of the academies - primarily an elementary school, the deep mysteries of Seiyo that would someday come to be were not yet in residence. Still, it was an academy of not dissimilar tenor to Fuuka - and indeed, many of the wealthy families of the Island sent their children to Seiyo before they moved on to the more prestigious senior academies in adolescence and adulthood. Seiyo was well-known for a number of families that sent their whole clans through the school, including wealthy traditionalist clans like the Amakawa, Hotori, and Fujisaki families.
This was the state of things until the middle of the century. As World War II drew to a close, the Magic Association was driven deep into the caverns beneath the island by Witches and Orphans emboldened by the withering of the Great Heart Tree in response to humanity's deep despair. Although they rallied and re-established defensive lines, many modern observers of the events that would soon come to Southern Cross hold this as the beginning of their doom.
Some years after the close of the War, as Japan scrambled to ascend into the modern era, one family aided the nation's ascent: The wealthy Ohtori clan saw potential in the peculiar workings of Southern Cross Island, and with their vast fortunes, bought out all the major educational institutions at the center of the island. Their goal was simple: To create a single, prestigious, international academy within Japan's borders. And thus, Seiyo, Southern Cross and Fuuka Academies folded under a single aegis: Ohtori Academy.