peckenpaugh | Just before curfew tonight...

outside central classrooms tonight

what's up? It’s Spirit Week! As is tradition, Peckenpaugh’s cheerleaders meet after dinner to decorate Central Classrooms in the lead up to the big game this Sunday. It’s not all hanging banners and throwing glitter, though. There’s music and snacks and time flies by fast as the kids get distracted from dressing up the lockers of the school’s quidditch and quodpot players. By the time they’re done, it’s damn near curfew, and they all decide to leave in one big group to ensure everyone makes it where they need to go on time.

Leaving the well lit school halls behind the squads step out into almost total darkness. The streetlights that usually illuminate central campus’s cobblestone paths are dim and flickering, their usual golden glow somehow a sickly yellow-green, as though something is sapping them of power. It’s far too still, too. No wind. No sound. Just darkness and silence, or near silence.

Armani is the first out the door, and they come to a skidding halt at the bottom step. Several of their squadmates plow into the back of them and they almost topple over, pointing straight ahead and shushing their friends.

There’s something by the statue of Yalldive Peckenpaugh. Somethings. Two forms, crouched at her base, fiddling with the bricks while she flails and complains. They don’t seem to notice the gaggle of teenagers spilling out of the building before them, too focused on their work.

Thinking they’ve found two Malstrom students pulling a prank again, Willow approaches with their wand drawn, but it quickly becomes apparent that those are not students at the base of the statue. Each step Willow takes is harder to complete than the last, and whatever spell they were about to sling winds up caught in their throat. Hearing footfalls, one of the two figures looks up, gaze flashing with the eyes of a predator. Under that gaze, not a one of the cheerleaders can move.

The form at the base of the statue stands, slowly, wrongly, and steps out into the sallow light, moving as a spider moves. She is a woman, or a girl ⁠— the age is hard to pinpoint. Human, but wrong. Deeply wrong, as though plucked from the uncanny valley. Her clothes are dated, worn and patched, but clean. In her arms there are clumps of vines and purple flowers and after what feels like an eternity of silence, she makes a sound.

At first it sounds like she’s popping her shoulder, then cracking her neck and knuckles, but she’s not moving. The snapping and popping continues, coalescing into more complex sound. Words, though her lips are still. “Wood from the West... he... has gained. Three keys... yet remain.” Snap, pop, crack. Like tumbling pebbles. “_Tell… her. ^Warn her. Tell... her. Tell the thread that sews shut the maw. Tell the tailor. His garden… is... growing.”

The second figure, still fussing with the statue, stands abruptly and takes a step away, disappearing into the shadows down the path. Two silvery eyes blink from the darkness and then are gone, and suddenly the air seems lighter for it.

“Tell her,” rattles the woman. Is it a warning? A threat? Hard to say, but it’s difficult to feel as though her presence could mean anything good, the way she skitters back toward the dark like a bug, disappearing suddenly as her companion had.

Once they’re gone, each student feels starkly as though they’ve just surfaced from a long dive in cold water. Lungs burning, heads clearer, and each feeling acutely the desire to return home to their beds. Within seconds, all the lights buzz, burning brighter suddenly before returning to their usual golden glow. Adrian, startled, lets out a loud shriek that scares the hell out of everyone around them. With the paths lit again, the coast seems clear, and no sign of those two figures remains.

Now what...?

how this works! ⬥ This event is open to House and school cheerleaders, but is not mandatory. If your cheerleader sat this one out, that's fine, too!

⬥ Feel free to thread or search/investigate under the "LATE: NOW WHAT?" section. For the next couple of days, a mod will get back to you if your comment necessitates a response.

⬥ Students left Central Classrooms at quarter til 10PM.

locations! ⬦ EARLY EVENING: IN CENTRAL CLASSROOMS: The music echoing through the halls of Central Classrooms ensures the academic building is slightly less eerie than a mostly empty school can be after sundown. Club Room 1's doors are thrown open and snacks and drinks have been set out besides the materials you'll need to decorate halls and lockers tonight. You haven't been spooked yet. Why not enjoy it?

⬦ LATE: NOW WHAT?: The two figures are gone and that oppressive feeling with them. Standing outside Central Classrooms, what will you do?

⬦ LATER: BACK HOME: You've made it back to your House, but can you get to sleep?

⬦ OOC - QUESTIONS, COMMENTS, CONCERNS!

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Adrian hardly pays attention to how pissed his sudden scream of terror makes anyone around him because his own fear is abruptly replaced with anger. Fired up, he throws his wand arm out before he's even done screaming punctuates it with an, "Expecto Patronum!"

The stout little corgi that soldiers forth illuminates the clearing with silvery light, a stumpy but noble little warrior. There is nothing. They are gone. The corgi wiggles its butt before it disappears.

"That's right! Run!" he says, as though after-the-fact bravado at all makes up for the earlier shriek.

The patronus might be a little overkill, but it's not making Elijah feel worse about the situation, so there's that. The same can not be said for the shrieking. Still, as everything returns to normal around them, he pats Adrian on the shoulder, a half-friendly-half-awkward gesture.

"Thanks, Adrian," he says, before turning around to make sure everyone is still with them. People are already spreading out - investigating, photographing, quibbling amongst themselves. It'd be easy to lose track of someone.

"We should probably all get back to our houses," he says in the loudest and most authoritative voice he can manage.

Armani pretends he cannot hear as he continues doing what-the-fuck-ever he's currently doing.

Mary Grace blatantly ignores Eli as she holds her phone out toward the others.

"Does the patronus make anyone feel safer?" she asks, and no matter how hard she tries to sound genuinely curious, a way to dig down and figure out just what their new friends were, she sounds real fucking judgey about that fog dog.

Edited (idk how i did like 9 spaces there) 2020-03-10 01:19 (UTC)

Adrian exhales heavily, shoulders unknotting once it seems the whatever-it-was has passed. He shoots Elijah a sheepish smile. "Maybe swing by and tell a teacher, too?"

To Mary Grace he offers optimistically, "It made me feel better!"

"Could it just be a placebo effect from seeing a fluffy corgi butt?" Mary Grace holds the phone right under his chin and looks him straight in the eye when she asks.

"I think being able to cast a patronus in an emergency is very brave an impressive!" Willow puts in.

"It made me feel a lot better!!" Armani calls back with conviction. Maybe he's listening, a little bit.

"So what y'all're saying is these things were made of dark magic specifically repelled by fluffy corgi butts." Mary Grace does not ask this. She does not want to participate in boosting the self esteem of a man.

"Do you think they were dark magic?" Willow asks, turning huge eyes to Mary Grace. Finding love is important, but so is not dying. "They sort of ran before the patronus, right?"

"Yeah, but I bet the Patronus scared them off so they couldn't just go into hiding," he adds for the sake of Adrian's ego.

"Absolutely!" Willow agrees, laying a hand on Adrian's shoulder. And also giving it a little squeeze. For comfort.

"I ain't in Defense, but all that sounds pretty fuckin' dark to me." She waves her hands at the statue and the direction their visitors had run. "Wonder if there's something under her."

"Should we dig?" Willow stage whispers.

"It was vines they were messin' with," calls Armani, who is standing near the statue and just shouting to them like a normal human being. "Come look."

Edited (UHHH LET'S SAY THIS HAPPENED BEFORE THE SIGIL?) 2020-03-10 02:20 (UTC)

"Don't touch it! You don't know what it is!" Willow shouts, entirely too loud considering the space between them. "You could be POISONED!"

Too late!! His little hands are all over the place!! "Oh! I can finally try this!" may be his last words.

Edited (forcefully squishes the timeline together) 2020-03-10 02:24 (UTC)

What's that creeping feeling climbing up Adrian's spine? That white hot panic tingling from chest to fingertips? Are those strange beings back? Are they right behind him? Breathing down his neck?

Oh, wait. No. It's just a Quackenbush with her hand on his shoulder. And now she's shouting in his ear.

He swallows. "Don't get your ass killed, Armani. What'll I tell Eddy?"

Mary Grace furiously taps notes on her phone. "Someone get pictures if something blows!" she calls out. "We'll split the WizLitzer."

Edited 2020-03-10 02:29 (UTC)

Armani goes back to pretending he can't hear them while he does exactly what he wants to do. And what he wants to do is play with his sigil in the vines.

"If you die, I'll make sure you look awful in that casket." Chanel finally tunes in, after searching the area with Lumos on her own for a little, with the worst threat she knows.

Something is happening to pull Armani's attention far, far away from the threat of being an ugly corpse. Laszlo is taking pictures.

Just before curfew tonight...

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