peckenpaugh | HE IS HERE

the vines have run wild

it's over Everything is in shambles. Walls and floors torn and broken from roots and branches sprouting through. They block doors and crowd passages and pulse with sick life. The Thing sits in the center of it all, angry and starving, its trunk both still and moving in ways you catch only when it is in the corner of your vision. Branches that look less like bark and more like skin stretch in every direction, lush with shadowy leaves and dotted with bits of glowing blue. The ruined floor is littered with those little twinkling dots. Seeds. Everywhere, seeds. They hang on boughs, and rest on banisters in the upper levels. The one thing in this nightmare that doesn't radiate that awful, pervasive hunger.

The roof is gone, replaced with a writhing canopy of shadow and muck. Some parts of it are complex spiderwebs of tendrilly shapes, others solid formless movement. The only consistent thing about it is that it is terrible to behold, faintly nauseating to look at for too long. Ash rains down between gaps in its branches, and what glimpses of sky are visible are nothing but swirling gray clouds. What stars still shine are magic, man-made, floated between balconies by prom committee before the dance.

Those remaining begin to stir. Each one of you has heard Pocket's words, "Find the roots." And if you want to save your friends, your family, the holler — hell, maybe even the world — that's exactly what you're going to do.

You climb from protective cocoons of dying moss, push your way past walls of solid ice, emerging into utter destruction. Things move and make noise at the edge of your vision, but for now, at least, all is calm. What to do? Where to start?

it's ruined Among the twinkling maple seeds are the dropped possessions of students and staff, lost when they were pulled away. A compact mirror, a cell phone, a pair of glasses, cups of punch spilling across the floor. A single red heel sits at the edge of the jagged pit that peers down into the Sorting Path. The air here is hot. Too hot. If you jump, you'll surely be boiled alive.

Though locked when everyone tried to flee, vines and roots have torn the doors to the auditorium off their hinges. The splintered remains of heavy oak doors litter the entrance halls and stairwell alcoves, leaving an open path outside. Not that you'd want to flee, by the looks of it.

A cool night breeze is the only relief from the growing heat of the auditorium, yes, but even that is tainted by the heavy scent of flowers. Outside, vines and purple flowers have exploded over every surface. They climb up lamp posts, engulf buildings whole, hang from trees. It would be beautiful if it weren't horrifying. Campus is unrecognizable.

there is no hope Roots and vines clog the way to the Sorting Path, and most stairwells are completely obstructed by the growths of that horrible tree. Up above, something buzzes and wails, a mockery of a cicada's cry, and beyond that the twittering of birds nesting in the tree's highest branches.

Pouch coalesces in the middle of it all, a one-winged magimagicicada, weak and weary but undaunted. Resolute, if not reinvigorated. He bends down to touch a seed, and the moment his obsidian fingers light on it, a blue-white portal to somewhere else rips right through reality. A memory begins to play. Somehow, the bug seems to know what he's seeing.

She gave us what we need, the one who ran says to the gathered students, his voice in their heads as much as the air. Let's all not let her down, huh?

Find your friends. Find my siblings. It's time to fight.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Jupiter does a big shrug. She thought the lunch lady's name was Brenda.

She steps curiously toward their lunch lady, examining the fact that she doesn't seem to be reacting to their sudden presence. "Did she break?"

Trudy steps carefully over bags of chicken nuggets, taking in the sight as she adjusts her glasses. "I have to agree with her," she says, then she grabs her wrist and tries to take her pulse through her fur. She tries to see the lunch lady's face, to check her eyes, but she isn't nearly tall enough, and she doesn't ask for help. "She's frozen. Not temperature, but just... stuck."

That ain't right. But it could be worse. At least there are no piles of rancid gravy and slicey pasta in here, as far as Tony can tell.

"Everything in here stuck?" He reaches for the shelf with his left arm and gives it a solid shake.

No. It's not stuck.

The shelf rattles, but of all the things filling it, only that stack of boxes moves.

Thud. Thud. Thud. One after the other, three battered boxes of tater tots drop on Lunchlady Bigfoot's head. She's moving again. A howl of rage the size of her lungs reverberates off the walls of the freezer and Lunchlady Bigfoot pivots, throwing her potato wedges at the cart instead. The cart rolls back, freeing the clipboard, and everything holds once more.

"Whoa," Jupiter takes a jump back to avoid any fallout from the chaos, trips and catches herself on the wall. "Shit, man."

She watches, silent for several seconds. When nothing happens, Jupiter says, "She's jammed, again."

"Careful!" Trudy says. Unlike Tony, she probably could be crushed beneath the weight of a toppling shelf full of frozen school lunches. "She's having a bad day, huh?" Trudy says, then stoops to pick up the clipboard.

Trudy grabs for the clipboard, and she certainly gets it, but in doing so she leaves an exact copy behind. The one in her hands glows gold. Trudy has found the linchpin! And with that acquired, Loraine or Brenda the Lunch Lady begins to move again.

The lunchsquatch kicks the tots away from her with a holler, knocking the freezer door even further open.

"And WHERRRRE the hell is all the PUDDING?" she shouts as she stomps her way out of the freezer and into the kitchen. But it doesn't quite look like the Peckenpaugh kitchens on the other side; it looks an awful lot more like one very memorable prom.

[MEMORY COMPLETE. Puzzle solved. Linchpin acquired. You may continue to thread here or move back to Peckenpaugh through the portal.]

Trudy looks from the golden clipboard to the doorway back to the ruined prom, then tucks said clipboard under her arm triumphantly. "Easy!" she announces, apparently pleased with their progress.

"I have so many questions," Jupiter says, tentatively moving away from the wall to approach the angry lunch lady once more. Trudy's right. Maybe she can get her brother back fast.

After a careful examination, she turns to Tony, grinning crooked, "Dude, look what you did to Brenda."

“A constant source of misery for this poor woman,” Tony shakes his head and slaps his thighs for reasons known only to himself.

None of this makes any sense to him but he’s not about to admit that in front of Trudy. “Alright, well, back at it then?” Action oriented, he points with his chin back toward the ruined auditorium. “See if folks found any more clipboards yet...”

Well, that certainly sounds like a plan.

"You think they're all clipboards?" Jupiter wonders as she gingerly makes her way toward the freezer door.

Tony, Trudy and Jupiter completed the memory "Tots".

Upon emerging from the memory out into the auditorium, the portal snapped shut behind them.

Elsewhere in the auditorium, Lunch Lady Bigfoot was freed.

Tony, Trudy and Jupiter each received 5 Tokens for participating in this memory.

You can check your token totals in Pouch's shop here, and maybe see if there's anything worth grabbing while you're there!

Edited (got permission from churl to close up shop here) 2020-06-02 03:38 (UTC)

HE IS HERE

MEMORY: Tots

MEMORY: Tots

MEMORY: Tots

MEMORY: Tots

MEMORY: Tots

MEMORY: Tots

MEMORY: Tots

MEMORY: Tots

MEMORY: Tots

MEMORY: Tots

MEMORY: Tots

MEMORY: Tots - COMPLETE & TOKENS