Grand Ridge - Conference Room [@fuck all everybody in the room, I don't give a shit]
Britney was the one who invited her to this meeting in the first place. Andrea suggested that perhaps she shouldn't, since she wasn't involved in that very emotionally-charged event, but her friend was persistent that she joined them. Britney was a confident woman, but perhaps she wasn't as confident as she portrays herself as. Andrea had implied that she had experience in participating in groups like these, so maybe her friend was low-key relying on that experience to guide them through this process as painlessly as possible. Perhaps she thought that it was because she wasn't there that she was the best one with the clearest head to help these people out.
Part of Andrea wondered if this was just one big prank being pulled on her for being foreign and so trusting.
First she heard someone talking about their weird new neck tattoo – they stretched their neck out and pointed at it, and nothing was there. Someone mentioned their own new tattoo that they don't remember getting and rolled up their sleeve. Nothing there. This continued on for a while with different parts of different people's bodies, and then they started talking about dreams and nightmares. They were talking about how they apparently all had the same dreams. Such things may not be uncommon when multiple people suffer an extremely traumatic event together, but their conversations were getting oddly specific. Then someone else in the crowd, someone named Billy, starts dismissing all of it like one big joke. She felt her chest getting tighter.
Then Britney starts whispering, telling her about strange happenings unique to this town. Then she asks her if she believes in magic. Andrea looked at her, her eyes slightly red and watering, staring daggers into her own.
“I don't appreciate being made a fool.” She managed to choke out. “If you wanted to--”
Then suddenly a bat randomly flew out of one student's notebook and into another student's face.
“--Ah!” She shrieked. She jumped back, pinning herself against the wall in front of the classroom, her hair brushing against the chalkboard. Now she forgot all about the sense of betrayal and the pain that came with it. She was breathing heavy, her chest heaving, and her eyes were open wide like full moons. She turned to Britney, like she was expecting some sort of explanation.
"Well, we're all trying to forget, Mr. Cullen," Claire deadpanly said to Martin, letting her innate comments about the goth boy bleed through. "But, we can't. And we aren't going to. So might as well learn to live with what happened." How hypocritical of you, Claire. Claire scolded herself the second those words left her throat. You've been trying to forget what they did to you that you nearly ruined your own damn life a hundred times. Claire sighed.
"How about we try to figure ou-" Claire started up, but she couldn't help but cut herself off when Tweedle-Dee and Tweedle-Dum started bickering. It was mainly Billy that started to piss her off with his flippant attitude (why are you even here, you tool?) then Penny jumped in trying to get him to shut up - to no avail other than annoying Claire even further. While Penny couldn't stop Billy, Claire could.
"Billy, I know you revel on being a tool," Claire hissed at him as she took the pen out of her mouth, "But sit your ass down and shut up, or get the fuck out." She didn't care if she'd hurt his feelings, and she'd lose a free source of booze and weed. She'll live.
Even though Britney was trying to explain something to Andrea, she nonetheless had to step in - Or else things were going to get out of control. Either Claire was gonna kill somebody, or... Billy was going to make somebody kill him. She shook her head in irritation - it felt like she was dealing with a bunch of children. Still, she gathered everyone here for this, so the burden of keeping things together fell on her - and only her. She sighed as she slammed the clipboard on the table hard enough to cause one hell of a noise. The kind of noise that got everyone's attention.
"That's. Enough." Britney punctuated every word, "If you absolutely have to bicker, do it outside. But on that note..." Britney trailed off as she looked at Billy, "If you are not going to take this meeting seriously, then I'm going have to request that you leave, okay?"
Britney shook her head as she turned her attention back to Andrea... whom was incredulous. She knew that she'd be skeptical to believe magic, but seeing is believing. But, right now, everyone was dumping a lot on her - they were going waaaaaaay faster than she expected. Too fast.
"This is no joke." Britney said, "Okay, how about we talk outside for a bit then I can help you make sense of things?" She tried to get the group to take a break - because if she didn't, things were going to reach their breaking point very fast. Provided that nobody did anything stupid...
... at this point, Rien's drawing came out and flew directly towards Billy's annoying face. Britney's face went flat as she hung her head - and rested her palm directly onto her upper face by shaking her head.
"... Son of a bitch." The words escaped her lips.
"The fuck?" Claire raised an eyebrow as she eyed the bat. She looked at it's flight path and realized that it came from the blue haired girl. She pursed her lips as she resisted the urge to say that, what she did, took some major balls. Even though it's fairly evident that the people in here are all superpowered or awakened, or whatever the fuck they want to call themselves, there's still a need for subtlety here.
From: Grant Still at school, but classes are done today. I've got time so I can come around now.
To: Grant Can you meet me by the conference room?
Grant is still in Grand Ridge. Perfect. If Lynette played her cards right, she could go meet him, sort out this little "problem" of his, and be right back before anything goes down. She looked at her good friend Aliana and smiled. She tapped her on the shoulder as she said, "I need to meet a friend about something..." She trailed off, "I'll be back in a minute. Can you just fill me in on anything I miss when I get back?" She asked, but she quickly, but discreetly - while she didn't want to miss any of this, she also didn't want to interrupt it - exited the room.
She nearly bumped into some tall dude who was creeping into the room. Instead of saying anything, she just squeezed by him and kept it moving. She waited down the wall for Grant to show up - hopefully.
Kimberly was wearing her uniform for the cafe - black cargo pants with a red polo shirt and a black apron on top - as she manned the front counter. Kimberly didn't mean to miss the support group meeting, and she really would have loved to get to the bottom of this magical mystery, she was scheduled for work today. Working slightly above the Montana minimum wage wasn't bad when she didn't have to worry about, you know, supporting herself and she still lived with her parents. She still had money to dick around with when it came to her show.
Paige had ordered a latte, and when it was finished, Kimberly took the time to go take it to her. She knew about the girl's leg, and didn't want to put pressure on it. It was probably the same kind of sympathy she felt for Jordan. When she approached the girl, she smiled as she said, "Here ya' go, Paige, I hope you like it," She started off, before saying, "You like it here so far?"
Jordan was also here, but she found herself in the corner drinking a cup of coffee. She was studying for her classes, and was fine being left alone.
The room was steadily becoming chaotic and that wasn't good because chaos made it really hard to focus. Claire had critiqued his commentary, not that it really mattered to him, he wasn't going for a deep philosophical overview of the situation. He was just being upfront, every part of him wanted to forget that night. He wanted to wash it out of him, he wanted to scrub it away like a stain on his skin. He wasn't going to pretend like he didn't, and if the whole room thought that was stupid then he didn't give a damn.
"Mr. Cullen, huh? Is that a term of endearment or-"
And then the argument had started. Billy, in his very Billy way, had began to roll out the jokes. Normally, Martin might have found this funny because he was just so persistent about having the last word, however, the timing was a bit ill. When Rita suggested to Rien that they do something to put an end to it, he kind of agreed that it was probably for the best because it he had to hear another second of sibling squabble then he was going to burst.
Watching Rien sketch from the corner of his eye, he didn't quite believe anything would happen. Maybe he shouldn't have been doubtful with all that he'd seen lately but he was. He was trying to maintain an ounce of skepticism but, like a rabbit out of a hat, they pulled their drawing right out of the page. It was immediately set loose in Billy's direction and the foreign girl, Andrea, reacted in fear. He had nearly reacted sharply himself.
Aliana was starting to envy that Lynette had excused herself from the room. This place was becoming a circus.
Martin heard Britney, who had seemed so mild mannered before, react by cursing. He didn't blame her, her entire plan was going to shit right before her eyes. It wasn't only inconsiderate of the attending parties, it was also insane.
The group was becoming a mesh of sound and movement that Martin just couldn't keep up with anymore. "Quiet!"
The room went black, all the light had been drained from the area. There was nothing but dense, solid, blackness. Any light streaming in from beneath the door or the windows had been completely nullified. It lasted only a few moments, holding it in place was hard but it was worth it if it shocked some people into quieting up. The light came back, the room brightening as soon as he gave up on holding it in place. It left him filling a bit beaten.
He pointed at Britney. "Your group, your time to talk. Say what you need to say."
When the veil of darkness came over the group, there were various sounds of shock that it pretty much ended all the tomfoolery that was going on in the room. But, Britney had enough. More than enough. She was clenching the clipboard hard as she could. Her plan was going horribly wrong - maybe she was just deluded into thinking that such a plan would work, or that she had too much faith in her fellow classmates. She shook her head as she raised her head. The darkness was gone - her eyes were attracted to the flame that Justin had created in between his thumb and index finger, presumably to create light.
"Okay, I've had enough," Britney hissed in between her teeth, her attempts to keep her composure were falling apart. "You've all turned something I've put a lot of hard work and faith into... into a mess. A joke." She shook her head.
"This is all insane. I get that most of you have powers, but you all don't have to have such a flippant attitude about it," Britney ranted. "I'm trying to help you all get help over one of the worst tragedies to happen to us in recent years - and I promise you that this is just the beginning, it'll get wor-" Britney cut herself off when she realized that she was letting her emotions get the better of her. Not just that, she was on the verge of letting something slip.
"Hey now," Justin casually said as he leaned back in his chair with his hands behind his head. "I was taking it seriously until mosshead over there pulled a bat out of his... her... ass?" He threw a thumb at Rien, almost laughing. Though, even though he was playing it off, he noticed something about his tall friend. Something he was going to keep to himself until further notice.
As a good friend of his said, 'Don't show your hand.'
"Welcome to Farmer Hill, Brit," Claire said as she shook her head. "The town that ruins everything." She rolled her eyes. Though, there was something that Claire wasn't going to let slide. She looked to the left, then to the right...
"... So, uh, you seem a bit... what's the word? Blase. Yeah, blase, about the whole powers thing..."
Once everything went dark Tuyen started panicking. She didn’t know how it had happened and really didn’t want to be here anymore. Not with all the bickering and bats flying out of paper. No thank you, it was stressing her out way too much. The shapes flickering across the darkness, probably created by her mind, just freaked her out more.
“I’m going outside for a bit,” she gave a mumbled explanation to Min before standing abruptly when the lights were back on and walking out the door (trying to make it as unnoticeable as possible). She just couldn’t stay in there for any longer. Min considered following her, but for once realised it wouldn’t be the best thing to do.
Rien, on the other time, seemed very nonchalant about the whole entire room going dark thing. Or even the fact that someone had lit a fire with their fingers. Okay, so there were more people with powers. Whatever. After they’d pulled the butterfly out they’d stopped being bothered by it all.
“It wasn’t out of my ass, it was out of paper,” Rien rolled their eyes at Justin, not even bothering with the whole pronouns thing. Too much effort. “Anyway, sorry bout that, didn’t mean to freak anyone out was just trying to get those two to shut up.”
They gave a nod in the direction of Penny and Billy. Admittedly, they weren’t acting like they were too sorry. They did feel a bit bad for that poor Andrea girl who clearly knew nothing about whatever was going on. They honestly hadn’t meant to scare anyone (apart from Billy). But really they’d given up caring about what people thought of them a long time ago. If everyone was going to be annoyed with them, so be it.
“And I don’t know about everyone else,” now they were addressing what Claire had said with a shrug. “But after figuring out the whole power thing, the initial shock wore off and I’m not really planning to worry about it too much. It’s just another crazy thing that happened, isn’t it? No use getting hung up on it.”
For once in his life, Min was struggling to keep up with the conversation. He’d already witnessed one kind of ‘power’ and now another? That just wasn’t something he could logically explain. Now they were moving right on to why they didn’t even think it was that spectacular. But he was still pretty caught up on something that Britney had said. It was a statement he was struggling to reconcile with because it could be a group that includes him.
“Why don’t you stay out of this, bitch?” snapped Penny when Claire butted into her argument with Billy. Claire wasn’t actually in the wrong: Billy was a tool. However, Penny didn’t like the idea that Claire was talking to her brother like that. Hell, she didn’t even like the idea that Claire was talking period. And then Britney had to chime in, backing her old BFF up. Penny was almost certain that her eye had started to twitch.
Billy, in his defense, did back down slightly at the urging of the two girls. He was only trying to have a little fun and bring a bit of levity to this situation, but as usual he didn’t recognize when it was time to pump the brakes. He was about to apologize when Rien finished their drawing. Instead of saying “I’m sorry”, Billy shrieked and swatted his hands in front of his face as a bat flew at him. Penny took a few steps forward and, just as Martin hit the lights, she blasted the bat against the wall, the crack of its body drowned out by Martin shouting, “Quiet!”
When the lights came back on, Billy sunk down in his chair. Clearly, all of this was too much for the guy, and he was (thankfully) stunned into a state of silence. Rita, having experienced Martin’s abstraction before, was still caught off-guard by it but more concerned about where the bat was—she hadn’t noticed Penny repulsing it to its doom. Penny’s hands were balled into fists, and her face was set in a sneer. Now that Martin and Rien had gone ahead and shown of their abstractions, there was no point in playing things close to her chest.
In fact, she was pretty certain there was no point to this at all. It was a failure. Considering who was in charge of it all, she wasn’t surprised.
“What do you mean most of us have powers?” asked Min.
It wasn’t a question meant for Penny, but she fielded it anyway.
“She means that, like Scott Reese, most of us have turned into freaks with extremely fucking dangerous abilities. And…” She turned her head towards Britney, a look of utter disgust on her face as she registered that the rich bitch had the gall to whine at them. “And you, like, seriously want us to believe that you put any fucking effort into this at all? Anybody can get a goddamn clipboard and send out a group text. The only joke here is that you actually think that there’s someone to blame here for this little shit show besides yourself. Shit, like, are you for real?”
Penny took a step towards Britney, bumping—or more like shoving, really—Claire out of her way.
“You want us to hold our grudges at the door. You want us to talk about our feelings and emotions,” continued Penny, mockingly. “But then you spend the entire goddamn time whispering to your croney and playing favorites. Seriously, Williams, what the hell? Billy’s not allowed to talk because he’s a tool, but it’s cool for a bitch like Claire to run her fucking trash mouth just because you’re buddy-buddy?” Penny folded her hands over her chest. “Why don’t you drop that holier-than-thou act? Stop pretending that you don’t love shit like this.”
There was a lot going on that Andrea didn't understand, and she had sort of expected that going into this whole situation. She wasn't a part of the camping tragedy like the other students here, so she suspected some issues arising such as not being able to relate to their unique and collective struggle. She expected that maybe her being an implant or a foreigner to this state - and hell, country - would set her aside from the peer group of pre-acquainted individuals, outcasted and ostracized so to speak. She wasn't expecting talk of invisible tattoos and shared dreams, or a bat magically appearing out of thin air. She wasn't expecting superpowers. That's what a number of these kids were calling them. One of them even talked as though it were normal. What could possibly be normal about it?
Her own issues and trauma, despite how profoundly they affected her, suddenly felt very small in the grand scheme of things. Part of her thought she might be going crazy, maybe she relapsed doesn't remember, and now she's hallucinating. The only problem with that logic was that felt completely sober. She has managed to stayed sober for a very long time. Even though she knew that Britney was trying to keep the situation under control, she just wished that her friend would come out with it and explain to her what was really happening. Then the pretty blonde girl spoke up.
Andrea liked to think she was able to get a good read on people, but she didn't know what her problem was. The best thing she could guess was that she and Britney already had a tumultuous relationship with one another before this brouhaha even occurred. She called her a crony, said that Brit was playing favorites - and although Andrea knew that her criticisms were emotionally charged and weren't really based on a foundation of logic or reason, it hurt her. Her words stung and they made her want to clam up and she didn't even know her.
This whole thing was her idea in the first place and it backfired terribly! It was her fault, and... gosh, she didn't even know her. She didn't even know her...
Andrea steeled her nerves and her resolve, stepping in between Britney and Penny, looking at the the latter with a pained expression on her face.
"Uh, miss? I'm sorry, but... you don't even know me." She scolded, her voice slightly trembling in her Polish accent. She looked around the room, "None of you know me, and I'm sorry that I did not make a proper introduction. To start, my name isn't crony."
She stabbed a glance at Penny and said, "Its Andrea, and it was my idea to get you all together in the first place. I wasn't there when the tragedy happened. That's why Britney was talking to me and trying to help me understand. Are you satisfied?"
With that biting remark out of the way, she continued to everyone else, "This is the first time I've been asked to help in facilitating a group, but it isn't my first time in counseling. I've visited counselors and groups like these for a long time. We're in all in college now. We're all adults now. We can be civil. Some of you might not agree with each other, but there's nothing wrong with that. All of you came here because maybe you either wanted to heal or feel like you weren't alone. You shared a struggle together, find unity in that if nothing else. We're all responsible for our own healing. I don't understand what's going on, but it isn't too late to restart. Maybe we can begin by apologizing and then everyone can work together to get me up to speed - from the beginning."
"Wow, you must be great at parties, Mosshead," Justin rolled his eyes up into his head as he nearly felt the urge to call Rien stupid. Probably all that alcohol fucked with his... her... head. "I'd lay off the bottles, mosshead. If pulling bats out of your ass - or paper, whatever you wanna call it - is 'just another crazy thing' then I think you need to reevaluate some of your choices." Justin laughed off Rien as he turned to Britney.
Though, Min had a great question. Just parroting what Britney said! Putting that genius level dick you got to good use, eh Min? Justin thought to himself as he leaned forward a bit.
Britney was about to answer the question that Min presented when Penny decided to speak up and voice her obvious displeasure at herself and Claire. As Penny dug into her... Britney tried her best to stay composed as she stared at Penny dead on. Her nails digging into the table as she counted to ten in her head, and sighed. Praying that somebody would step in and tell this bitch to get the hell away from here.
That was when Andrea stepped in... clearly rattled, but clearly a lot more logical than Britney herself was being, admittedly. She shook her head as she listened to Andrea speak. She took the words out of her mouth.
"Yeah... how's about we listen to Blondie - I mean Andrea," Justin immediately hopped to his feet. He didn't understand the obvious bad blood between the two parties - he was more inclined to stand with Claire and Britney than Penny, of course - but he also didn't think now was a great time to kill each other. He wasn't a great meditation - he followed his heart and did what was right. "We're all long past highschool - we're better than trying to kill each other over stupid drama." He briefly glanced over at Min... and realized he was maybe being hypocritical. But, that was something he was going to settle personally.
"It doesn't have to end this way."
So now we gonna sing kumbaya after all this nasty shit's been said? Claire thought to herself as Andrea seemed to have Justin and the others rallying behind her. Her aura had appeared the moment that Penny had started talkin' shit, and remained a violent, bright-red, color the whole time. She wanted to shove her head so far up her own ass that it was going to get lost... but even she couldn't realize how stupid it'd be to act like that. Especially since she's getting over the embarrassment of what she did yesterday... and she couldn't help but cringe...
Britney sighed as she calmed herself down. She was going to back Andrea on this, because it was stupid getting all emotional and anger and for what? To prove Penny's rationale right? There was no winning that way, so she had to concede.
"I'll be the first to apologize and say I'm sorry if it seemed like I was taking sides. I didn't mean to..." Britney trailed off as she looked to the rest of the group. "And to everyone else, I'm "
"... besides we're not buddy-buddy like you say," Claire rolled her eyes up into her head. God, Lawson drove her up the wall by having her head shoved up her own ass. She merely shrugged as she realized the red aura was still around her. "I'm not apologizing because I meant every word that I sai-" She was interrupted when she felt something poke her hard in the leg. She looked down and saw a wooden root quickly retracting in the direction of Britney.
"Not helping, Claire." Britney said, as she sighed and decided to bite the bullet. She didn't want to reveal too much, but perhaps there was an explanation needed here. Or else they'd be going in circles, and not in the direction that she wanted them to be heading in. She turned her head towards Min, and said,
"Now, to answer your question, Min, you remember that dream we all had?" Britney started off with the question. "The part where the robed people said that they were an Awakened - that's what we all are. Awakened."
"... and the fuck is that?" Claire asked with a raised eyebrow.
"Someone who has Awakened, in short, has unlocked a magical ability within them," Britney said, "For example... what our good blue-haired friend has just did, or Justin's fire." He said.
"Oh yeah!"
"And to unlock that magical ability, you have to be in some kind of traumatic incident..." She trailed off, and left it in the air. Everybody here is old enough to piece everything else together.
Grand Ridge Academy - Courtyard --> Outside Conference Room Hallway
From: Lynette Can you meet me by the conference room?
Grant's eyebrows rose in intrigue when he read the message. The conference room...? Why would Lynette be over there? Maybe she felt it would be secluded enough for them to talk privately, or perhaps there was something in there that she was wanted to show him in the first place. But then, what could she possibly have to show him that had to be kept at school? He had no idea what to think in all honesty, but it seemed important and he had no reason not to show up.
To: Lynette On my way now.
Once the text went through, he slid his phone into his pocket as he made his way inside the school building and headed for the designated room. He wasn't too far away, so it didn't take him long to arrive. As he turned the corner he could see Lynette down the hall, waiting for him a bit away from the conference room door. He gave a slight smile in acknowledgment as he nodded at her, glad to see she really was there. Maybe he really could get some answers.
"It's nice to see you again," he signed, seeing as she was one of the few people in this school that he could fluently communicate with in person, "You've found something, haven't you? Something..." He paused, thinking it over to find the right word. "...Incredible, right?"
She hadn't outright told him that she might know what was going on with him, but she hadn't refuted him or called him crazy either. She knew something, he could tell that much, but he didn't know what. Though before a response could be had, he could hear what sounded like muffled arguments and shouting that seemed to come from the conference room. He glanced at the door for a moment before returning his attention to Lynette, an eyebrow raised in bewilderment and slight concern.
Farmer Hill - Downtown, Near Sucre Café
As it turned out for Jasmine, the cafe wasn't too far away to walk to and she found that she was making good time. She figured she should tell Grant about the short distance so he didn't bother trying to get a ride, so she pulled out her phone intending to text him and reconfirm that he was still going. But as she did, she happened to look down and notice something peculiar on the sidewalk. Little specks of red that she normally wouldn't have been paying enough attention to see were splattered near her feet. She gasped and began to look at her immediate surroundings, but didn't see who the blood could have belonged too. However, she was near an alleyway...
No. No way. She'd seen enough horror movies and games to know where this was going. The side alley was suitably dark and creepy enough to no doubt hold something horrific, if there even was something horrific to be found. And with all the strange happenings that had been going on, there was little doubt in her mind that something awful was nearby. So no, she wouldn't go running straight into the alley, that was just stupid. However, she decided she would peer in from the sidewalk, since if somebody really was hurt they might need help.
Okay, so Rien felt just a little bit bad when the girl who’d helped organise this spoke up. She clearly wasn’t from here, that much was obvious from her accent. Rien placed it as somewhere European. Maybe from Poland? But wherever she was from Rien could sort of understand. They didn’t have much of an accent anymore but they weren’t exactly from here either.
“I guess I better apologise too then,” Rien shrugged, just ignoring Justin’s comment about laying off the alcohol. Okay so he was probably right. Both about that and this not just being another thing. But they’re choices weren’t exactly sound and they’d stick by that. “I’m sorry for pulling a bat into your face.” This was towards Billy, who did look fairly shocked. He’d deserved it but whatever. “And for freaking everyone out so much, especially Andrea. I didn’t really mean to.”
It was a bit more genuine than the last time even if they didn’t feel a bit more than a little bad. They weren’t exactly the one causing all the drama – that all went to Penny and Claire. They just hadn’t really helped things.
“Awakened…” Min murmured the word to himself after Britney finished talking, thinking on the word. So in short they’d all gotten powers from the trauma of Scott killing various teachers and classmates. It didn’t take him long to figure out that he was affected to. That would explain the things he’d been seeing when picking up objects and how he just knew things about them.
Testing his theory he picked up the jacket Tuyen had left in her rush to get out of the room with the mark on the back of his neck glowing slightly. Straight away he knew that Tuyen was the last person to use it and that she’d left it hanging in a wardrobe for almost a month. He didn’t quite know the word for this, but it definitely wasn’t normal.
Then he must have a mark like all the others, just somewhere he couldn’t see it.
“So if we have a tattoo, we have a magical ability?” Caelea spoke up properly for the first time. She didn’t particularly want to talk to or ask Britney, but it was a burning question. Because as far as she was aware she had the mark but not the power. And she had no clue how to figure out what magical ability she had.
“Well most people here have both, I’d say,” Rien responded even though they didn’t know the answer. “How come you seem to know so much, Britney? I mean I’m assuming it isn’t just in a handy book in the library.”
Min stayed in thoughtful silence – really all he wanted to know was how these abilities worked scientifically, but he doubted anyone else here was smart enough to know that. And now that he’d gotten the explanation he needed he didn’t need to ask anything else.
Grand Ridge Academy - Outside the Conference Room @FernStone - Tuyen
It seemed that David's discreet manner wasn't going to last, whilst standing by the door it had opened and an afro-rocking gal stumbled out, passing David without so much as a mutter of "'scuse me" as she twisted to pass between David and the wall. Of course David had moved out of the way, he wasn't such a dick that he'd block someone on their way though, again, no muttering nor thanks was given by her. The girl rushed towards the wall and stopped, probably waiting for someone.
Then of course in the typical American-education fashion somebody began to scream from within the school room. That was one of David's most disorganised moments. Still being distracted from the girl who had exited the conference, his attention had been away from the same such room. A few seconds for his brain to register what had happened, a few more for uncertainty. All in all he was pretty slow to react and, it seemed, another development had occured when he wasn't concentrating. "The fuck?"
Make that two...
Again there was a loud sound from within the room, this time it was distinctively a word rather than a primordial screech - then it went dark. It was only for a few seconds... It wasn't like the lights had gone out and since David couldn't really see within he wasn't able to confirm his suspicion either. The light from the crack under the door suddenly vanished, in its place was pitch, black darkness without depth.
"The hell?" muttered David, crouching down to touch the now normal lighting for the door. With an index finger he slid it across the gap before turning the face towards his own, checking for any clues as to what happened - some strange dust or powder. There was nothing of the sort - it was a regular, trampled floor. It seemed, like what the Drunk had done, that physical residue was not left nor created. Well at least they ruled out goo-alien parasites off the list of supernatural causes...
David stood back up, and a good thing too since another girl had decided to rush out in a hurry. If freaky shadow puppets hadn't just played with David he'd have likely blurted out what he was thinking, a bad joke including pregnancy and an unwanted result... It was probably for the best he didn't say it, wasn't that funny anyway.
David stepped backwards to let the girl pass, this one was asian- and short, he looked her over for some sign of strangeness but seeing nothing that could explain what had occurred within he decided to confront her. "Er, excuse me." he asks, staring at the girl. "Sorry but you were just in there. What- What happened?"
Her fists clenched so hard into the fabric of her skirt that she could see her knuckles starting to turn white. It had occurred to Aliana that she could disappear and leave this room entirely with little to no one noticing. Everyone else might not be entirely freaked but she was. She couldn't blame the girl with the dark hair for hurrying out in the way that she had. She was wanting to do the same but loyalty to Penny was holding her here, she wasn't going to leave her best friend to face off with the masses on her own.
She hadn't been able to react when Count Dracula had darkened the room, it had been too quick. She had noticed the dejected body of the bat and how it lie crumpled on the floor, it reminded her of how much damage that Penny was capable of. Billy was looking worn out on everything and she almost wanted to try to comfort him, after getting bitched at by Claire and getting a small animal thrown at his face, he'd already had quite a crappy day.
She couldn't bring herself to do much more than give him a slightly apologetic glance, as if she had to apologize for all these grown ass adults and their actions. It wasn't like she could bust out a hug in the middle of this room or anything, he'd have to deal with pity glances. She liked Billy and there was really no reason for everyone to gang up on him like that.
She turned her attention to Britney when she began to talk about the Awakened and she could immediately feel a question pressing onto her tongue. "Brit, I trust you and I trust what you're doing here but. . . I can't help but wondering, are you a part of this too? You're speaking with experience, so I can only assume that you've experienced something."
Martin however, did not know or trust Britney. All he'd gathered about the girl so far was that she seemed to be holding in a lot of secrets. It wasn't that he really cared, if she wanted to hold group therapy sessions and hide things then that was her business. He just couldn't help but feeling like he'd been duped into attending a gathering for all the kiddos who'd developed super powers. He'd wanted to scope for markings but he hadn't expected it to be this forthcoming.
He needed to update the notes on his phone, especially in light of Rien's abilities. He hadn't caught what Penny had done to the bat, but if he had then he probably would have been appalled. The foreign girl had spoken up and she'd been angry, rightfully so, he would have apologized too but he hadn't done anything to her. He had only quieted up the room, he didn't really see any crime with that.
He liked that Rien was taking this with a grain of salt, it made him feel irrational for being scared of it. They kind of had a point, who cares? "Why did we all share that dream? Is that a part of it? Like duh that's a part of it but why did it happen?"
Paige almost jumped when Kimberly spoke to her. Obviously, she shouldn't have - someone would bring her her drink pretty soon, of course - but she'd been so lost in thought that she'd almost entirely forgotten about the latte.
Paige grinned at her own obliviousness as she turned to face Kimberly. "Thanks" was her reply to the first thing Kimberly said, taking the coffee as she did so. She had been about to say something like 'Sorry, I didn't hear you, I was thinking' when the other girl spoke again.
"Yeah, it's been pretty good so far. I prefer a smaller place like this to the city," Paige said. That was all true. Here in Farmer Hill, Paige didn't have to be somewhere every second minute, it was quieter, and best of all, there were no crazy fucking heroin-addicted loons firing fucking guns at innocent fucking people. Yeah, that was a real upside. Not considering it the wisest of plans to voice her full opinion, Paige simply frowned briefly, and said "I like the quiet, and the scenery."
Paige had just noticed the shape on Kimberly's forehead. It seemed to be a design, like the mark on Paige's back. It was weird - Kimberly had never struck Paige as the type to get a tattoo, and the forehead was hardly a typical place to get one either way. To make matters stranger, no one else seemed to be paying it any notice, despite it being so blatantly and strangely positioned. Even Kimberly herself didn't seem particularly aware of it, as one would expect with a new tattoo - when Paige had gotten her first one, her normal one, she'd totally avoided wearing any kind of coat or jacket, even in the cold, just to make sure it was visible, for three weeks straight. In short, it seemed that the same thing that had happened to Paige had happened to Kimberly.
It didn't seem smart to mention any of this. It must have been some kind of illusion or hallucination, there was no other logical explanation. As for illogical explanations, well, Paige was no conspiracy theorist. The supernatural held no interest for her, and it seemed foolish to use it to explain something which was more likely an issue with her health.
Still, a part of her knew this wasn't a hallucination. This simply wasn't the kind of thing people see.
Paige realised that she had unintentionally assumed a troubled expression. Kimberly, being Kimberly, would probably pick up on this pretty fast, so Paige decided just to answer the question before it was asked. "Sorry, I'm a bit out of sorts right now. I've just... got some things I need to think over. Don't worry about it."
As Britney listened to everyone's various sounds of intrigue and other such concerns, she felt this whole meeting turning around. Going just where she wanted it to. Still, she knew that they were doubtful of her knowing this. As Aliana said, it sounded like she has firsthand experience. Which was true... but at the same time not very true. Still, she had planned for this from the beginning and knew exactly how to put an end to all the doubts. She walked over to her white leather bag which she had casually set in the corner and bent over and dug into it for a second. She pulled out a black book - an old book with a golden lock - and casually sauntered over to Rien, before she opened the book, and presented it to Rien.
"It's not in any library," Britney said, unaware that she was being somewhat smug. "But, yes. I do in fact have a handy book." This elected a snort from Claire.
It was a diary, scrawled in a distinct handwriting that made it just about legible.
Hey there, don't know any better way to phrase this; but my name is John Reid - the (hopefully) previous Guardian of this town, to help guide the next generation of this town's Awakened so you can do your job. If you don't know what the hell a Guardian or an Awakened is, I'll get to that. I have to get the basics out of the way soon as possible. I'm hoping that by the time you're reading this, I'm dead. If I'm not, by any chance, dead and you're reading this anyway, then damn it. But if I am dead, let me say that there's a lot more to Farmer Hill than you think, and I've spent the last thirty-something years of my life keeping it safe from supernatural danger. Hence, why I called myself the Guardian of the town. I know I'm gonna die one of these days, and somebody else is gonna have to keep this town - AND it's secrets - safe or a lot of people are going to die. Which is why I wrote about all the things you'll need to know so you're not going into it blind like I did. And there's going to be a whole lot of messes that need cleaning up. From the magic itself, to the monsters that lurk in the woods, and to your job.
But, let me start with the two most important things: the magic. I don't know what it is about this place, but there's some kind of mystical force flowing through it. I don't know, but it allows certain people to unlock a potential within them - or "Awaken." A potential to see the world for what it really is, and not just that, an Abstraction. What's an abstraction? A magical abilities that reflects the user in some way. Maybe you're shy, now you can become unnoticeable. Perhaps you're impatient, you can now teleport. It'll reflect your personality or mindset in some way - whether you like it or not. Anyone who has Awakened has a little black mark on im' somewhere, called a sigil. And only an Awakened can see it.
There's a bit more to it than that. Have you noticed that you're seeing things that nobody else can see? Having dreams that seem less like dreams? Or hearing things that you shouldn't? Don't worry you're not crazy, that's just all apart of being an Awakened. You can see the world for what it really is, kid. Simple as that. One thing that the Awakened can do is see things that normal people shouldn't, such as most abstractions, or the little monsters of this town. Those dreams are a retro cognitive ability, the power to see into the past, it's really important. Trust me. It'll save you.
Now that you know about your tools, here's your job [Page ends]
That was where the book seemingly ended. From there, a great deal of the pages were torn out, and the rest were blank. As if somebody was trying to hide something. But, from there, Britney passed the rest of the book around for everyone else to read.
When it was Claire's turn to give it a read (This handwriting looks a lil' familiar if that makes sense), her finger lingered over the name John Reid. She held her mouth open as if she had something to say, but she merely muttered to herself, "John Reid...." The name was in fact familiar to her. He was one of the big farmers in town, apart of the little defacto council with the mayor. He was always trying to help people stay on the straight on and narrow... but, even he had to realize this was one thing he couldn't fix.
"I'm not sure how familiar you all are with John Reid, but he gave me this book and was a very close friend of mine," Britney said, as she looked at everyone here. "You know that dream with the two kids? Well..." She awkwardly shuffled in her feet, as she put her hands together.
"... He was the boy in that dream we all had, and he's dead. Nobody knows who killed him or how he died."
The words made Justin shudder. It reminded him of the death of a certain somebody, and how nobody knew anything. He sighed, but there was a question on his mind... "Wait, where's the rest of the book?" Justin said as he shuffled through the book, "I don't think there's just one page, is there?"
So, John's dead? It made sense that he was the boy in the dream - they didn't look all that different. But, if Britney was going where she wanted. That was when she narrowed her eyes, and said, "And what's this all even mean? You want us to become the Guardians of this shithole?" She asked, "Sorry, not interested, and I doubt anyone else here is interested." She looked around the group to various responses.
Claire had a point, and Britney wasn't going to ignore it. "And I'm not asking you to do no such thing," Britney started off, "But, what I'm asking you all is help getting to the bottom of this - I want help helping me solve his murder, and to find the rest of his book because..."
She looked off to the side, "... there's a lot of threats out there that John was keeping at bay, and once they figure out that he's out of the picture, they're going to come after us before we can become a problem for them."
She shuffled her feet, "So, I'm certain that the best ways to handle them are in that book."
@Mike73 Grand Ridge Academy - Outside the Conference Room.
Upon seeing Grant, Lynette immediately smiled at her friend. She immediately greeted him with a 'Hello' in sign language. It was one thing that Lynette prided herself on, her incredible sign language skills all because of her mother's disability. It wasn't something that she could flaunt here due to the lack of people that even knew what she was doing. Still, Lynette understood Grant's nonverbal communications, as well. He asked her if she had found something incredible. That was true, she was on the verge of something incredible. She wasn't willing to share it easily, however.
'On the verge of something unseen,' Lynette communicated with him with a smile, 'But, I need to see something first - you said you made the sound go away?' She asked, she didn't think it was wise to flash her newfound ability with anybody.
The alleyway was veiled in a supernatural darkness of sorts that didn't let any light pierce through it. As Jasmine stared into the abyss of nothingness. In an instant, she heard the sounds of absolutely heavy footsteps and a fleshy, dragging, sound. In a moment, the darkness faded away as Scott Reese stepped out of the shadows, holding the dead body of Callie Kingston with one hand, and a bloody blade with the other. He looked at Jasmine, and dropped Callie's dead body, and used his free hand to wipe the blood off his hand.
Suddenly, the streets seemed empty. Not a person walking, or a car in the street. Was it a dream? Or some other ability that Scott had? He looked at her and grinned as he raised his blade above his head to bring it down on her.
His master's voice tells him that she's a target, too, so he should kill her now.
The look Penny gave Andrea as she chided her was particularly withering, and she scoffed when the girl insinuated that she didn’t know her. If Andrea was the kind of person who would seek friendship from Britney Williams, then Penny knew the kind of person that she was. Just another sweet, caring, and completely full of shit, backbiting bitch. Be civil like an adult? Seriously? Has she met the adults around here? Andrea was lucky they weren’t shooting at each other with guns right about now.
Of course, Britney stepped in and tried to play it off as if she was sorry. Typical move. There were too many people around for her to show her true colors, so she had to pretend to be pleasant. Penny hated people like that. Even when Claire burst in, as she was apt to do, the windbag, Penny did not take her burning, judgmental eyes off of Britney.
“Right, Claire. You aren’t helping,” echoed Penny when Britney called her out. She was about to step in and point out that it seemed like Britney knew more than she should’ve when a few of the others in her group did the job for her. Penny held her tongue, her face as smug as a snake. She couldn’t wait to see Britney try to worm her way out of this one. Yet, much to her surprise, Britney pulled out a diary and passed it around the group.
Awakened. Abstractions. Rita didn’t know what to think. She was never the kind of person to believe in superstitions or to check on her horoscopes, but she had that dream, she had seen a monster. She sat there in silence after passing on the diary, her finger picking at her cheek as she tried to handle the information. The diary said that abilities reflected the user. Well, she could see why being able to force others to tell the truth would fit her—as she was reading, Rita strongly doubted that what this diary was telling her was real. Hell, she still didn’t fully believe it, and in all honesty, it didn’t matter anyway. This wasn’t her town, it wasn’t her fight, and she didn’t know what the job Reid mentioned was but it sure as hell wasn’t one for which she had put in an application. She had other things to worry about; why was she being made to deal with this?
Billy, already sunken into himself with defeat that he had truly deserved, felt even worse after reading the journal. As someone who loved sci-fi and fantasy, he had hundreds of conversations over the years about how cool it would be for something like this to happen. Of course, he was the hero in these conversations, decked out with awesome powers and surrounded by chicks with tight bodies in even tighter spandex, but the reality of it wasn’t so appealing. For starters, despite the sigil on him as far as he knew he didn’t have any damn Abstraction. Talk about being ripped off. Still, that was fine. If great responsibility came with great power, then no power meant he didn’t have to sweat any of this craziness.
So why was he still so on edge, then?
Penny read the diary in a quiet fury. It would’ve been nice to ignore everything that it said, like it was nice to ignore all of life’s problems, but too much of it checked out. She could only imagine her younger brother, Henry, and how he could’ve possibly been attacked like the boy in their dream. Why had that boy—why had Reid—been saved and made into a Guardian if it meant that he would only fail to save Henry later? She felt hot, angry tears well up in her eyes, but she kept them back. She refused to think like that. Until she saw a body, Henry was alive. Missing, but alive. Yet, if she had known about this earlier...she wouldn’t have believed it. As much as she wanted to scream and curse at Britney, she knew she wouldn’t have believed it if the girl had told her.
"And what's this all even mean? You want us to become the Guardians of this shithole?" asked Claire. Her words were like a hammer, striking against the glass that was holding what little amount of cool Penny had left. "Sorry, not interested, and I doubt anyone else here is interested."
It shattered. Britney barely finished her sentence when Penny started spitting fire.
“Go screw yourself, Claire. You don’t speak for anyone. Jesus Christ, like, you shouldn’t even speak at all, the sound of your voice makes me want to put a bullet through my goddamn head. Of course you don’t want to take responsibility. Nobody was expecting the town whore to step up from her fucking knees!” Penny was shouting, pointing an accusatory finger at the other girl like a fire-and-brimstone preacher. “But that doesn’t mean that there aren’t people here who would actually want to protect this shithole of a town, including all of the assholes in it like yourself.”
“I’m serious. We just gonna let dickheads like Scott Reese stroll around and murder people because, ehhhhhh, it would be so hard to try? Screw that. Screw. That. I’ll have you know that he—someone—butchered another one of the girls that was also at the camp. Could’ve been any of us,” said Penny, her focus spreading to the group before she lasered back in on Claire.
“I would ask how many more of your trailer trash friends would have to be put in a coma before you stop screwing about, putting what shit you do into your body, trying to, like, open your mind, man,,” she said, with a spot on impersonation of her brother, “and open your eyes, but that would be pointless. Because you have no friends. Because you suck. Jeez-us. Zoey really dodged a bullet by going into that coma. If I was your friend, I would’ve hated to see how much of a fucking coward you actually are.”
Nate struggled to follow the multitude of conversations going on in this room, though he was able to pick up a few names here and there. Much of it looked to have descended into a dick-measuring content when in came the presence of a real, live fucking bat in the room - flying straight out of the ass of some blue haired guy who, who in turn couldn't necessarily be pinned down as a guy or a girl. As far as Nate was concerned, they were androgynous
In fact, judging by the silence on his part, he'd taken this better than the others had - and who could blame them? None of this shit was normal in any sense, even-
"Quiet!" All light in the room disappeared. Not faded, not seeped out - disappeared, as though it was never there or as though they were covered in a shroud of dark. It was an almost terrifying experience and would've been even moreso for Nate had he not already been through his own self-discovery of powers and the wonderful things to be done with them. Not helping to tarnish the intimidating visage once the lights were back on was the owner of that voice that had told them all to shut the fuck up, a shorter, skinny guy - one whom Nate had already pushed aside in his mind as yet another face in their crowded group.
More bickering followed. Billy, the guy who'd been the earlier bat's original target slunk back into his chair whilst Penny, who he did know (if only by their earlier acquaintance and her 'bumblebutt' monicker) laid into another girl, Claire for laying into him. Yeah, this was a clusterfuck - and for a change he didn't stick his hand into the grinder. Not least because he too was pondering on the implications of it all - thank you for raising that, Penny - then the other girl, Britney, started giving her own explanations for it all.
At least she had a rough idea of what it was they dealing with. Perhaps too much, though he'd never quite put two-and-two together in this instance... at least until she presented to the collective group this diary of hers which at one point had been signed and scrawled by a John Reid. The same John Reid who rang absolutely no bells with him but, as Britney would explain, was the kid they'd seen under attack in their dreams. Now he was dead dead, for-real dead.
And worse yet, all the shit he'd seen and consumed in years' worth of video games and other media... this whole thing was a clusterfuck to take in. He was an 'awakened'? Something like that usually came out of a game, like a character class in one of those crazy JRPGs or a monicker given to the protagonist by some oracle types. Hell, there was even a fucking word for his phasing-through-shit power, it was an 'abstraction' - with all the burdens and responsibilities that entailed. So he'd be expected by this dead guy to be a 'Guardian' for this town? The same town in which he'd spent a tiny fraction of his life in contrast to Bellevue, where he was still the loner, the lost new face.
Claire raised that point before considered doing so, thankfully at first, though he felt a quick pang of shame when Penny laid straight back into her for her 'cowardice', pointing out that Scott Reese (who, yes, also had an 'abstraction' - one that turned him into Bruce Banner's backwoods cousin) was still out there and ready to do more harm to them. Or, for that matter, to other people - what about his Uncle Quent - would he be able to handle that if he ran into him on the job? Especially without even knowing what he was getting into?
Even then, what could Nate do? Penny's argument was poisoned with her last comment - the one about Claire's friend in the coma. That, of all things, managed to strike a personal chord with him and for that, he had to get some kind of retort out, even if it was a poorly humoured one that went back to their earlier conversation, "Hey, you should probably put those used tampons away before they start flying around the room again and hit someone in the face like the bat hit your uh - friend, there." He was, referring to Billy sat next to her. They looked familiar, maybe they were actually... whatever.
Either way, it was a bitch move, even if she was right about the rest of it all.
Investigation into a murder was another matter, though... one he'd still have sooner left to the likes of his Uncle Quent - the man was a veteran cop of the West Coast's biggest city, after all. For emphasis, Britney decided to drop another bombshell on them. Great.
"Threats?" Nate finally threw his arms up, "You mean like that cannibal-monster thing that tried to make your not-dead friend dead before he could go on to die just now?" It was a legitimate question - the idea of a thing like that coming after him freaked him out. Even if he could just let it pass through him, just having something like that... no. "Would guns even work on them?" Shit. That was a thought he'd spoken aloud, though now he'd said it - he meant it. This was Montana, right? And people like Quent had all kinds of stuff on hand for shooting - probably even some of these guys, too.
Grand Ridge - Conference Room @Surtr Inc@Atrophy Not to sell everyone else short, but Andrea really didn't expect her little speech to go as well as it did. Sure, she hoped that people would listen to reason. She liked to believe in the best of people and that one level head in an massive argument can go a long way – but damn was the tension high, and she wasn't holding her breath for anything. First was the asian boy whose name she didn't know, then Britney, Claire seemed like, well, Claire, then the hipster girl, and then the loud mouthed kid that started escalating the situation in the first place. Penny looked like she was just stewing in self righteous anger or something. A few of the other students participants that were quiet just went on ahead to progress the conversation, and Britney was more than happy to oblige them.
Granted, she felt a little frustrated because she was still in the dark, but at least everyone seemed to cool it a little bit. Still, it would've helped her help them if she understood what was happening. What they're talking about started sounding like a foreign language to her; a bunch of nonsense about “abstractions”, weird dreams, and some kind of journal featuring some dead person's handwriting. Using context clues, however, she could tell that the dead person was connected to their problems in one way or another. Whether they were a previous victim, present in their dreams – it was hard to tell, maybe the man was both. Regardless, it seemed to point some of these kids towards a very dangerous direction, and Claire had no issue with making her opposition loud and clear... but Andrea didn't have much time to think about it before Penny lost it.
Needless to say, there were a list of things in her dramatic tirade that started waving red flags in Andrea's head. Insults and barbs that made her feel like red-hot needles were pricking at her skin and closing in from all sides. The steady drumming of her heart against her chest escalated as she felt her head become light-headed. If she doesn't fall into an anxiety attack, then she was about to get very pissed. There weren't very many ways to go about doing that.
“...makes me want to put a bullet through my God damn head.”
“Nobody was expecting the town whore to step up from her fucking knees!”
“...putting what shit you do into your body, trying to, like, open your mind, man...”
If she were the target of these disgustingly incendiary jabs, she might have shut down, but she wasn't. Claire was, and in that moment, she knew more about those two women than she bargained for. Now she was pissed.
She was never really the type to get into yelling contests with other people whenever she got angry like some of the people here. No, she just made it very clear that she wasn't your friend. Perhaps most people wouldn't care, but she doesn't dare spare a single ounce of her boundless generosity with anyone like that. All she could really bring herself to do is stand between Claire and Penny. At first she looked at Claire with a knowing, sympathetic glance – no, empathetic, her eyes were welling with emotion as she hovered close in front of her. Then she turned that glance to face Penny with such a look of scorn that none of her friends would think possible (Britney has certainly never seen it).
“You need to leave. Now.” Was all she said, growling at her as she pointed to the door, not taking her eyes off of the other blonde. As far as she was concerned, nothing else needed to be said. Anything more would be redundant. Penny knew now that she wasn't welcomed here. She already got her licks in, and if she continued then she'd just be making a fool of herself. Andrea hoped she was reasonable enough to see that.
Maybe part of her wanted to show Claire that she had to be the better person here, even if it's hard. Even Andrea thought it was hard, since the idea of getting back at her was such an attractive option... but they had to prove that they were better people than her. That's all one can really do about people like that. Be the better person - even if your voice and your fists were trembling. Lord knows her body was shaking with barely controlled rage.
"Oh shit, I can finally live my dream of becoming The Crow."
It was hard to take this seriously, come on, Abstractions and guardians? Give him a break. He wasn't denying that this shit was weird and that weird shit usually had a deeper meaning behind it but this was starting to feel more and more like a bad joke. Not only was the journal explaining everything very conveniently but their courteous host had dodged a few questions in its presentation. Also, he couldn't help but find it mildly insulting.
The powers reflected their users? What is that supposed to mean? Was it pure irony that had made him into a shadow-bearer? It would make some kind of hilarious sense that the loser goth kid had developed shadow based abilities, it would be too fucking funny. Of course he'd end up with something like that, something quaint and unintimidating. Something so incredibly useless that it was almost not even worth having a power. And what did the other kids have? How soon would it be before he found out?
His good mood from this morning had quickly diminished and now he just wanted to leave. He wanted to get away from these people, he wanted to get the hell out of this room. They were all so tedious and annoying, he had thought he was pretentious and annoying but God, these people were worse! He was starting to remember why he was better off when he just didn't say anything to anyone.
When Penny had started to shoot off at the mouth, he could feel his patience wearing down to a thread. He knew that she was passionate, it was her nature to be unflinching about her opinions but it was also her nature to be a huge asshole. Not only was she displaying that now, she was practically making it the center of the attention of the room. The things she was hurling at Claire were things that people shouldn't say in polite company.
Some big guy that he'd never seen before spoke up, mentioning something about guns. "Sorry, I had to leave my shotgun at home before getting a dorm here."
Then the foreign girl spoke up again, her voice coming out with concentrated fury. He could practically see her shaking and it made him want to move back a little more, if some kind of fist fight broke out then he wanted to take his ass out of here. He was already contemplating it. He would just have to gather Rita and go, if she'd even want to leave with him. For all he knew, she wasn't half as annoyed with this mad house as he was.
"Rita," he said in an undertone, "Can we leave?"
It made him kind of sound like a kid who was getting tired of sitting in a restaurant. He was kind of feeling like one.
Aliana was getting sick to her stomach, she didn't support Penny's onslaught of insults to Claire but she didn't support Claire's reluctance to help out either. She didn't know why Britney had thought this would work, there were too many deep grudges to just be ignored. They were all destined to always be at each other's throats. There were people here that she would rather die than work with but. . . Britney was speaking from the heart. Whatever this was, she really believed it.
She guessed that she believed it too. Who better than to make things disappear than a girl who spoke about nothing deeper than surface level? She was hiding people and things just as much as she was hiding her problems. Sweet, sweet irony. She wasn't angry with Penny for being angry, she didn't want her to continue acting so nasty though and just as she opened her mouth, the foreign girl cut her off. She was demanding Penny to leave.
Aliana glanced to her friend worriedly, wondering how she might react.
Everything was going well... they needed a bit more of a "push" to remind them what was at stake here - but Britney knew that perhaps, maybe, she could create one. Then Penny ran her mouth, barraging Claire with so many insults that had to stung. Just because Claire said that she want anything to do with this. Britney bit her fingers - she could ignore Lawson, but Claire couldn't.
"Oooooooh..." Justin knew this was gonna get ugly. Real ugly. You don't just say that kind of thing in a room full of people, and expect there to be zero reaction. Especially when you stab that deep. He didn't know Claire like that (he figured she had some problems, but if she kept it to herself, Justin was fine), but given her reaction, Penny may have some merit. On one hand, maybe Penny was right that Claire shouldn't be so reluctant to protect this town. On the other hand, nobody has to fight any battle that they don't want - or have any stake in. One thing his late grandmother taught him was to pick his battles veeeeery carefully.
An attribute that neither Claire nor Penny possessed, it seemed. Even though Justin hadn't been very active in this conversation, he knew that, perhaps, he should stop Claire from tearing this girl a new one.
The edge of the table snapped because Claire gripped it so hard - her aura was a bright red color, and smoking. She dropped it to the ground. Each and every one of Penny's words made her mad. Very mad. It was a quiet rage that boiled up inside of her... and she did nothing for a few moments. Not anything as the fat fuck ran his mouth, and nothing as the stupid foreign girl told Penny to leave.
"Penny, if my voice makes you want to end it all, then motherfuckin' do it already and stop wasting air already!" Claire screamed as she tried to maneuver over to Penny, but was stopped by Justin. She tried clawing her way past him, but he stopped her by grabbing onto her shoulders. The only thing stopping her telekinesis from crushing him was the fact she inherently didn't want to hurt him. "You are the most pretentious, arrogant-ass, self-righteous little bitch I've ever seen in my entire life! You act like you're some kind of sane-woman in a town full of assholes, yet I don't see you actin' any better than the people you shittalk."
"Claire, she's not worth it." Justin tried to convince her, but she wasn't listening.
"Is it fuckin' cowardice to only want to be left alone?! Is it cowardice to wanna' live in fuckin' peace while you do whatever asshole crusade?" Eventually, a wave of force knocked Justin away and there were nothing stopping her from tearing at Penny. "Actually, it ain't even a crusade! What good are you doing sittin' here bitchin' about what I'm while Scott 'strolls around and murders' here? Sounds to me like you just like putting other people down to sound bigger - but yet you're soooooooooooo small to me."
This was more than enough for Britney. Her heart was pounding, and there was a tightening in her chest. All I'm trying to do is the right thing - why is it so hard? Britney thought to herself as every sound, every thought, started to seem incredibly loud. Her face rested into her hands - why? Why couldn't they realize that there were things far bigger than their stupid grudges out there? Why couldn't they all just stop for second.
"Would all of you..." Britney stood up from her slumped position. "... fucking stop!?"
At this moment, a wave came fourth that made them do just that: stop. The room went completely black - and not because of Martin's abstraction - for just a brief instant. When the light came back, everyone found themselves in a teal-blue colored space - standing on seemingly a transparent platform. Claire looked around, and wondered where the fuck she was even. She looked at her hands, and noticed that she was transparent again and ghost-like again - like that dream.
"Okay, this is getting weirder by the literal moment..." Justin said to himself as he realized he was red and transparent. "Well, I can at least say I prefer this to all that shit going on in that conference room?"
@Surtr Inc Grand Ridge Academy - Outside the Conference Room
"Yes, I-"
Grant abruptly stopped motioning, cutting his answer short. He cocked his head to the side slightly a moment or so after he paused, his eyes scanning Lynette's facial expression. What she just asked him...why would she ask him that? Did it have to do with what she knew?
"I never said I made the sound go away," he told her. He didn't appear to be accusatory, just curious in her thought process. "I didn't think I caused it, I thought something just happened to me. But I said 'yes' anyway. That doesn't make sense."
His hand reached for the strap of his book bag and held on tightly as a thoughtful look appeared on his face. Why would he say yes? It never crossed his mind to think he had any pull on what had happened to him, yet he answered so...automatically, almost. Did he actually do it then? Furthermore he was now agreeing that he'd made the sound go away, even though he'd said he'd gone deaf. What the hell?
All the while, the muffled yelling in the Conference Room appeared to escalate as he saw somebody enter the room, and the light coming out from underneath the doorway even went out for a second or so before returning, only for the yelling to return once more and the arguing voices to become more emotional. Grant's concern over the situation only grew more as their conversation went on. Combined with how puzzled he felt about his situation, he felt more than ever that he needed some answers. But he couldn't push too much, Lynette was the one who'd invited him out here after all.
"Lynette...why are we here? What's going on in there?" Grant signed after thinking it over, "I get the feeling you know what's happening to me, and whatever it is, it has to do with why we're here."
Farmer Hill - Downtown, Near Sucre Café
Strangely enough, Jasmine couldn't see anything when she tried to look down the alleyway. It was still daytime though, so why was it so dark? And specifically in this alley as well? But one of her other senses did pick up on something. There was noise, the sound of heavy footsteps and something fleshy that was dragging along the ground. The darkness suddenly began to fade away once she heard those sounds, and from within the darkness stepped out...
Jasmine felt her breath catch in her throat as she stared down- no, up at the monstrous entity before her. A massive bloody blade was held in one hand, and in the other, the body of a dead woman. She looked familiar, was she a student? She didn't personally know her but she was sure she'd seen the victim before. But now she was dead, and the killer was right fucking in front her. He dropped the body, and the thud of it landing on the ground was the only noise Jasmine could hear. There were no people, no cars, nothing. Just her and the monster, alone. She took a step back, unsure if running was even an option here, but then the behemoth raised his blade with the intent to cut her down.
She threw herself backward and off to the side, scraping her arms up on the pavement in the process. Even if she only had a low chance of escaping, there was no way in hell she was going to just let herself die. She didn't know how narrowly she had avoided the attack, but she didn't give it any thought and instead scrambled up onto her feet before booking it away from the killer as fast as she could. She didn't have a goal in mind, she just knew she had to get away, and happened to be making her way towards the original destination of Sucre Café.
"Help! Help! Somebody help me! Please!"
The screams ripped out of her throat, purely on instinct. Adrenaline rushed through her body as she pushed herself as hard as she could in getting away. She continued to scream, and glanced back over shoulder to see just how far (or more likely, close) her pursuer was while still going as fast as she could.
As she ran, unbeknownst to her, a symbol had begun to take form on her abdomen.
