[IC] The Hidden Ones

[Emma]

Alice Keller

The local news droned on the tv in the background, as Alice lounged on the couch reading an old book. Since vampires could not sleep, one had to find new ways to occupy their time. For Alice it was reading, learning new languages, playing violin, dabbling at painting, and composing music no one would ever hear. Though lately she had taken to swimming laps in the lake. Boredom was a problem, but she liked her routine.

It was 6:00 am, and the news anchor man on the tv looked worn out in HD, as he babbled on about the local Mayoral elections, the closing of the factory in the next town over, where to get flu shots, and that the local police caught the suspects who cherry-bombed all the mailboxes on Magnolia Street. The weather girl was looking way to chipper for six in the morning, as she explained today would be mild temperatures, 30% chance of rain, that autumn was in full swing, and she was looking forward to this weeks sun filled days.

It was September 4th, and only a week into the new semester at Gringore. Alice was a librarian at Gringore, and a part time student. She had one class in the late afternoon, but the rest of her day was basically free. She dogeared the page she was on and closed her book. She smelled like the lake, after swimming laps in it for three hours last night, she really needed a long shower. Getting off the couch she placed her book down on the coffee table. She gathered the two empty wine glasses and a teacup, and put them in the sink in the kitchen. She sighed looking at the mess of dishes in her sink, and added the cups to the ever growing pile. She rarely ate anything at home but, tea, and wine glasses were in abundance around here.

Her house was located on a quite street, full of retired people, and couples over 60. She had lived at, 382 Rosewood Ave, for five years now. The three bedroom, two bath, old yellow colonial was her haven from the chaos of Tellmore, and the unsuspecting Montaville. Her house was clean, but on the cluttered side, with books piled on tables and the floors, painted canvases leaning on walls, and potted plants galore. For lack of a better description it resembled a Anthropologie store, with extra eclectic clutter, and a more lived in feel.

In the bathroom she turned the shower on. Undressing as she waited for the water to become hot. Looking in the mirror, a tall plain Jane was what Alice saw. She had always liked her hazel eyes, and the shape them, but she thought her chin was to big, and her lips to puffy. The mirror began to fog from the steam of the shower. Stepping into the shower she attempted to plan out her day.

45 Minutes later she stepped out of the shower, smelling of lavender soap, and shampoo. Wrapped in a soft ivory towel she walked into her closet. Alice's wardrobe consisted of lots of vintage items, and high-end basics. She changed into her outfit for the day, dawning her black trousers, light pink tank, and cable knit sweater. She hung her wet towel on the door handle, and walked over to her vanity, putting on her watch, and spritzing on some vanilla lavender perfume. With a few bobby-pins she quickly pinned her hair up.

It was almost 8:00 am bye the time she finished her cup of cinnamon tea. Alice tossed her cell, ipod, and wallet into her purse. It was chilly out this morning, and smelled like the beginnings of autumn, the trees had yet to change color. She grabbed her grey coat and shrugged it on. She slipped on some shoes, and a scarf, then started her walk down main street, making her way to Gringore.

Alice walked into Gringore, and then made her way to the library. It was located on the third floor, and was huge, with six stories of wall to wall books, the deeper you went the more like a maze it becomes. It was home to the second biggest incantus book collection in all of north america. There was a section for everything, and it was easy to get lost. Alice made her way through the isles of books, stopping in the music history section. She scanned the titles, not really looking for anything in particular, her shift at the check out desk didn't start for another hour.

[Yahtzee]

Aedan swayed unsteadily on his feet as smoke wafted up from his clothes. This feels weirdly familiar. He thought to himself. I think it's called a deja something. Himself thought back. Shrugging off the quandary he walked away from the burning bus behind him in what might be considered a badass manner if it wasn't for his reddened eyes and woozy expression. As it was, he merely looked concussed, which may have well been the case given how unbelievable it was that there seemed to be fire mayhem going down and to the best of his currently very temperamental memory he wasn't the cause of such madness and my word what a long and overly worded sentence that was, when all that was really meant to come across was that it was pretty unbelievable that he had nothing to do with the exploded the bus. Other than having been in it. Which was coincidence.

Someone somewhere gave up on trying to explain the semantics of Aedan-based-bus-explosions and instead focused on him arriving at the gates of Gringore academy because actually nobody cares about him heroically pulling unconscious bodies out of a burning vehicle. What people want is to see him run face first into a wall away from a vampire that may or may not want to suck his blood. To be fair the vampire is pretty cool so maybe people wanted to see more of him than of Aedan and holy three foot long socks that aforementioned someone who is somewhere is not even close to getting on with the bloody RP post and is already two paragraphs in.

Someone somewhere is screwing with you. Aedan thought to himself. Wait, don't you mean me? Don't I mean me? Aedan wondered which sign of insanity encapsulated whatever this was. It's the first I think. You're still good bro. Aedan smiled in relief. Thanks man. Everything seemed so lavish in the entrance of the academy and he found himself very quickly becoming slack-jawed from either bewilderment or amazement. Or both. Or some sort of disease. Whatever it was he very quickly found himself lost but given that the day seemed mostly pleasant he was content to sit on the ground with his back against a wall in front of the entrance doors and wait for a student who looked like they knew what was going on to pass by so he could mug them of any information that they might have on where exactly he was supposedly going next. He did get the feeling though that it may well be into that wall and at a speed that would surely hurt a hell of a lot.

[Kaalee]

Kata woke up in a bed that was not her own, but it was not an unfamiliar bed. Rather it was the bed she usually woke up in when she got pissed off her ass like she did last night. She stretched before opening her eyes to see that Giovanni wasn't in the room at the moment, and she thanked whomever for that small blessing. Katalina looked around to find her clothes but all she could find was one shoe and the ruined scraps of her underwear.

"Where the fuck are the rest of my clothes Giovanni?" She called, knowing he could hear. She grabbed one of his shirts since he had a habit of keeping his blinds open to his nosey neighbors which she knew they'd be watching even at 7 in the morning. Kata went downstairs where Giovanni was sitting in just a pair of boxers. Katalina stared at him for a second before wrinkling her nose.

"Exhibitionist." She said, as she grabbed the pot of coffee and poured it into her mug, which she internally groaned as she realized she had a mug at his house. She found her pants laying underneath the movable island he had in his kitchen and she quickly snagged them, shoving both her legs in them before taking a sip of her coffee. She made a face as she grabbed the cream and sugar and dumped as much as the cup would allow into it.

"Jesus fuck, what is that? The devil's spawn pulverized into liquid form?" Katalina said, taking another sip and finding it to be drinkable now. She walked over to the entryway where she found her shirt hanging from one of the jacket hooks, and her jacket hanging off the door handle. She shoved both items on, throwing Giovanni's shirt back at him. She found one shoe in the living room but couldn't find the other shoe for the life of her. Eventually she stormed back into the kitchen, glaring at the man in front of her.

"Where the fuck is my shoe Giovanni?" She asked him as she put her now empty cup into the sink before turning to the asshole who just had a smirk on his face. She glared at him before switching tactics, and moved so she was kneeling at his feet. Giovanni was a lot of things, but at the base of it all he was a man and an Italian man at that. She could do one of two things at this point. She could stroke his ego, or she could threaten his ego. Katalina was petty enough to go with the second one.

"Giovanni, mi amore, if you don't tell me where my goddamn shoe is I'll make sure that you and your right hand will become much more acquainted. I can live sober, and I can definitely live with spreading rumors about a certain friend of yours." Katalina said, and Giovanni stood up, bringing her up with him.

"That's no little lie cara, besides what makes you think you can stay away from me? You haven't been able to stay away from me for the last 200 years." Giovanni said as he crowded her into the wall. She just rolled her eyes at him, pressing a hand on his chest to keep him from coming too close. He was nothing if not predictable, although it could be that Katalina just knew him too well.

"For that shoe I will, that shoe is one of few in existence anymore and is worth over a thousand dollars today. Where the hell is it?" Katalina asked him and he reached up, leaning closer into her and peppering kisses along her neck before leaning back and presenting the shoe to her. She looked up to see the hole in his wall where the heel of her shoe had been. He handed her the shoe and stepped back. She put both shoes on, before glancing up at him.

"Go, Lady Death, before I find a reason to keep you here." He said hoarsely and she sighed before exiting the back door, which led to the driveway and her car. She got in and drove to her own house rather quickly, since she did have classes today and while she didn't want to have to go teach, in order to keep her end of the bargin with the Guardians, she would have to in order to stay out of jail. Only 240 more years of this bullshit to go.

[TheIrishJJ]

It was five in the morning and Thomas was still awake. He had been awake for hundreds of years, but that didn't change the fact that Thomas sometimes got annoyed of it. Tonight had been one of those nights. However, he decided to do some music to fill the time. Whilst he had come from a poor family in England, that didn't stop him from trying things that only people with money could do. Since he had a lot of time, he had managed to save quite a bit of money, and spent it on piano lessons, just as the piano was being invented and fine tuned. He also learned how the play the guitar, and then, in the 20th century, the electric guitar. He also sung sometimes, but much preferred the piano and guitar.

Thomas was playing a range of music, from 'Comptine d'Un Autre Été', to Disney songs, to the Adele's 'Hello'. After hours of playing well enjoyed songs, and even composing a couple of his own, Thomas decided that he had enough, the sun was up and he had probably woken many students. Thomas climbed out of the window and jumped down, falling professionally on his feet.

Thomas strode around the school grounds, until he saw a familiar looking boy. Huh, must be déjà vu, he thought. Thomas walked over to him, asking him, "You new here?" in his distinct British accent.

[KenyeIsMyLife]

Mathias | Dorms

Mathias sat quite bored on his bed frame -yes just a bed frame- no sheets, no mattress and certainly no pillows. The darn moving company had called and said they took the wrong turn and ended up in another town and it wouldn't be another day or so till they back track and make it to the academy. So here he was fiddling with his laptop, on top of a wire frame using his suit case of clothes and toiletries as a temporary head rest.
The New England weather wasn't all too different from the Moscow air, and the Korikovs making sure to drill the local languages of a operation area to their hunters made settling into the local community quite comfortable. His first few days in America were nice, some intrepid young bilingual airport attendants saw his last name and attempted to make small talk in German, but he just stared blankly at them and explained he was a Russian native through and through. He spoke very little of his ancestral tongue, he and his father would often joke that between the two of them, they can probably pass off for a kindergarten student on their best days. Still he wanted to at least be able to greet his grandfather in German.
Anyways he couldn't be of much use just sulking here, so he opted to head for the library and check out some medical texts, and maybe some of those famous American comics. What he found in the library was quite impressive actually, the place as he could see had quite a varied assortment of tomes and tales, it certainly wasn't your everyday library. No, that was an understatement, it was fuck-huge, the Korikov's archives were quite large, but this certainly would hold a rather large flame in the book worm competition. What a wonderful place to be.

|Library|
...

Nevermind, fuck this, its too big. Where the hell are the comics- err he means medical books? Hell, the Q section of the mystery genre took up its own damn wing.

...

And now he was in the damn history section. How? Why? When? The world will never know. He was about to give up when he saw a silhouette further into a aisle. He was visibly excited at this point to finally find help and had to keep a conscious effort not to just yell out for. He started to jog,

'Finally this torment will stop-'

Crash

He just tripped over those weird rolling library ladders- another appropriate reason to hate large libraries, or rather libraries in general. Everything can be gotten online these days, why did he have to decide to go here, it would have be- oh shoot, the silhouette might have noticed his little accident. He wanted to run away at this point but his ankle hurt too much, at this point he was done and just kinda let a phrase commonly uttered by his grandpa out.

"Ficken diese"

@Emma

[Avanhelsing]

There was something to be said for being able to stay up late and work off minimal sleep. When you were a witch, things were even better. That meant you could do whatever you wanted while magic was the strongest. Jack was a lucky man since his power was in spells and potions. So he could learn them rather quickly and would rarely ever fail. His room looked like something out of a horror movie. His right wall was covered with jars of who knows what. They had been all sent to him by his grandmother who thought that he would need more ingredients than he would ever really need. She had sent him his cauldron. That was what Jack was currently doing. He was working on a potion for his collection. He needed an antidote for a few different potions so he was working on a basic cure potion.

The only thing that seemed out of place was a framed old picture. On it was two young people of opposite genders. One of them, the man seemed identical to Jack to the point where it was almost scary. Jack contended that this guy was his father.

Jack looked down at his cauldron as he dropped a spring of mint into it. "Sana quod postulo vos sanare . Iubeo. Sic erit" Jack chanted in Latin. He could use anything but his spells were mainly in Latin or French. So it was so. Jack looked back at his grimoire and sighed. He was going to have wait a few hours before he could finally bottle it up. So Jack figured now was a good time to get to class. He had a potion class and spell work to do. So he went out of his room and walked towards the school grounds. As he walked he saw that guy, Thomas. There was something off about him.

"You're Thomas right?" He asked as his accent gained it's creole twang. "I thought I have seen you around." He said trying to start a conversation.

@TheIrishJJ

[Yahtzee]

Someone approached Aedan as someones do but this someone one was different. Maybe it was the way he had gracefully fallen from his window in a manner that made Aedan feel like a potato in a cape or a humanoid with the bones of really dry and breakable twigs. As the young man walked towards him like a predator walks towards something it doesn't necessarily intend to eat immediately but wants to keep it's options open about, Aedan's heart began to flutter. Is this love? He thought to himself. No dude, your first reaction is fear remember? Then comes terror, then acceptance, nervousness, and finally, something-that-may-resemble-affection-but-could-also-simply-be-the-lack-of-sweaty-palms. That thought made him sigh wearily. Being a wuss was difficult.

"You new here?" The man asked in a way that made some part of Aedan want to reach out and hug the beautiful bastard and another run in fear and another gibber in terror. These parts fought for a moment before he could reply.
"Gubbklilg Heeee." Obviously the terror gibber won that round but Aedan wasn't done just yet. He rallied his thoughts expertly and prepared to speak once more and as he opened his mouth to triumphantly let out the most awe inspiring introduction of all time that would have made many a pair of pants begin to tighten someone interrupted him. As someones do. @Avanhelsing

If Aedan had been someone else, someone very, very different he may have mentioned something or done something but as it was he merely deflated like a cheap balloon from a crappy restaurant and sagged against the nearby wall as the new arrival spoke to the other man making Aeden think that all this mental usage of pronouns was becoming horribly confusing and it was high time to learn some names. Luckily New Arrival (as he was now known) helpfully mentioned Other Dude's name meaning that he could now be referred to as Thomas. Thomas, the name set something stirring in the back of Aedan's mind but he ignored it because it was from a time long since past and continually bringing it up was starting to get old. Queue dry laughter as people get the pun.

"I'm Aedan!" Aedan wondered where that voice came from, why it belonged to someone with the same name, and why it sounded as though it belonged to someone who had either been kicked in the nuts or was an eight year old girl. Or both. It was you, dumbass. It was a probably a bad sign when your own internal rambling began to sound exasperated. "Sorry, yeah that's uh... me?" Why was that a question? He thought. No shut up I got this. Thought he back snappishly. "I'm new but I guess you two aren't. I'm Aedan by the way." He held out a hand with a smile that seemed slightly more sick than friendly but he was going to be damned if he was going to hell or something else surprisingly literal. "I'm like super good at making fire uh burn. Yeah, If you want some fire to burn you just let me know. I'm the best at it." Just shut up and let someone else talk. Please. All of Aedan's parts heartily agreed with that statement and he resolved to shut up for at least a few seconds.

[TheIrishJJ]

"You're Thomas right?" came from behind Thomas, who tuned around to see who was speaking to him, "I thought I have seen you around."

"Yup, Thomas Smith, right here!" Thomas replied, "You're Jaques, aren't you? Do you speak any French at all?"

Just after Thomas replied to the boy who he thought was Jaques, the new kid answered his question.

"Hey there, Aeden, welcome to Gringore!" Thomas said to Aeden, glad to know the new boy's name. When Thomas saw that he had his hand stuck out, he grabbed it to help him to his feet.

[Avanhelsing]

Jack must have not noticed the other man. There was something up about that guy. Like he was different in a way if that really was a thing. The guy seemed to be a bit different. Jack usually could tell when someone was special. There were a few people like this guy in New Orleans. Jack had nearly been killed by a guy like that. Still that didn't mean that he could not make the guy feel special. Jack loved a good accent.@Yahtzee

"Well hello, Aedan." He said with his thick accent. People had been know to swoon at that accent. "Tu vas bien, mon ami?"(You okay, my friend?) He asked to be polite. "I figured that I was so rude for butting in." He said joking before he looked at Thomas.

"Je suis à l'aise. Dieu sait, je l'ai parlé toute ma vie. Je dois imagine que vous êtes couramment ainsi?"(I am fluent . Lord knows, I have spoken it my entire life. I must imagine that you are fluent as well?) Jack asked in fluent French. One did not grow up in the French Quarter without learning the titular language. Jack knew all about the language.@TheIrishJJ

"So Thomas how are you? I know you don't sleep so you must have a lot of fun at night." Jack said with a slight smirk.

[TheIrishJJ]

Thomas liked that there was another person at the school who spoke a language. French was one of his favourite languages, and although Jack probably spoke some variation of European French, it would be better than nothing.

"Je suis à l'aise. Dieu sait, je l'ai parlé toute ma vie. Je dois imagine que vous êtes couramment ainsi?" said Jack,

"Oui! J'ai visité beaucoup de pays francophones, la France, la Belgique, la Suisse et le Luxembourg. Est-ce que vous êtes de la Louisiane?" Thomas asked in response. "I'm all right, thanks. And yeah, I guess I do have a lot of fun at night," he said, blushing a bit.