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Ryugoku is a small, derelict city in Japan, unremarkable save for its poverty and gang warfare problems. However, unknown to most, it is also the home of the most extraordinarily violent high school in the world. Even hardened criminals know better than to venture onto its campus, calling Ryugoku High School a "hell on earth". It is a school in name only. Most of the faculty have abandoned it, leaving it completely in the hands of its students. It is a lawless wasteland, where students fight to survive. In order to boost their odds of survival, students have banded together into clubs, such as the Kendo Club or the Photography Club. Unlike normal clubs, however, they function mostly as gangs competing for dominance. The school's budget is distributed among its many clubs, with higher ranking clubs taking more of the pot. Beat another club, and you can take their funding. Of course, it's not just about money. Clubs have bitter rivalries with one another, conflicts sparked by perceived transgressions that go back for years, escalated to all out war. Hate and mistrust are as tightly ingrained in Ryugoku as fighting.
At some point, something strange started happening at Ryugoku. What started out as mere fistfights in hallways has evolved into something frightening and bizarre. Students have been said to punch through walls, survive falls from rooftops, and recover from injures that would leave a normal person paralyzed for life. There are even more outlandish reports of students who gained supernatural powers, such as moving objects with their mind, or conjuring lightning from thin air, or making graffiti drawings come to life. No one knows when it started happening, but these "Abnormalities" have become a common sight by now. What's more, the school has started to attract people from outside the city, people with Abnormalities of their own. As if in response, the Abnormality rate at the school increased, resulting in a dangerous arms race in an already dangerous landscape.
We start a few months into the school year. Incoming first years who thought that Ryugoku would just be a regular high school have had their rude awakening. Either they adapted, or they were beaten up every day until they dropped out. Clubs have had their recruiting spree, but many first years have yet to find their place. Already, some major clubs have fallen. Most notable among them is the Cooking Club, lead by the widely-feared Kibagami Yuna, also known as the Nightmare of Ryugoku. Defeated clubs have little hope of restoring their reputation in time for the upcoming All Presidents' Budget Meeting, which will determine how much money each club is awarded for this term. With deadlines looming and the Nightmare out of the picture, many clubs that were quietly biding their time are now putting their plans into action. New players will enter the fray and the remaining combatants must remain ever vigilant.
Yet another factor has been noticed by Ryugoku's rumor mill. By this point, many students have gone missing with no explanation, some of them even prominent leaders such as Music Club president Fujimori Jimin. The clubs all blame each other for the kidnappings, but there has been no conclusive evidence as to the culprit. This has only served to further increase the tension at Ryugoku High.
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