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

A little ways off, Felicity comes to a sudden stop. They're looking for something golden, right? And there's an obvious golden something here on the Quidditch field.

"The snitch," she says, and the irony isn't lost on her. They are gonna grab the snitch and then watch Peanut be named Seeker. Felicity takes an annoyed sip from her Big Gulp -- at least she's got that again.

"Any luck with that broom?" she calls back to the others. They might need it.

"I just mean if she eats it here we're not hurting her physical form."

Patrice goes to remove Peanut's goggles while calling out to Felicity, "Do you want me to try harder? I can really pull at it."

The goggles glow under Patrice's touch, coming free without even mussing Peanut's ponytail.

And suddenly, everything starts moving again, even faster than before. Peanut Jones can't hesitate. This is her chance and she's not gonna blow this. She yanks up and the broom bends upward, baby blue sneakers brushing against the ground as she begins her wobbly ascent. The golden snitch is still out there, and this time she ain't fucking around.

There's a smattering of cheers from the onlookers and Peanut spares a moment to show off, flying a couple quick loops before hunting down that snitch. And on her last one, she can see it; a rainbow tail, streaming along behind her, reaching all the way down to the ground.

At the other end of that tail, a surprisingly solid tail if anyone should try to walk on it, something shines. It looks like a tear in the air, or, maybe, a portal.

[MEMORY COMPLETE! You found the linchpin and got to bask in Peanut's moment of glory. You can continue to thread here or head back to Peckenpaugh through the portal!]

Well, shit.

Don't see that every day, do you? Well, not the sports. Sports aren't that uncommon or nothing. Bit anticlimactic, honestly. The sports. Glowing headgear's a bit intriguing. Holes in the fabric of spacetime, on the other hand? Now that's real far up there on the weird as all hell scale.

Des takes a step back, glances up at their unwitting host. "Guess we ain't stealin' her broom, then?"

"Oh, hey. That's what it looks like, just so you know. Bummer we don't get to steal her broom." Patrice tries to put the goggles on Des, even as he's looking to Felicity.

"...now you can hold it over her that you rescued her, at least."

"That's true," Felicity nods. But then the gears in her head start to turn and they crank out a much worse idea. "What if," she lowers her voice, "we tell people that Peanut's memory showed she's like 22 or something. And that's she ineligible to play Quidditch on a high school team?"

Des doesn't put up too much resistance to Patrice's attempts to shove the goggles onto his head, gamely allowing the other boy to mess up his hair with only a half-hearted elbow speared back toward his gut.

The corners of his mouth curl up. Don't much matter to him how Walnut Whoeverthehell's career in high school sport's goes. If it'll make Felicity happy, he ain't morally opposed to at least floating the idea. "How we playin' it?" he asks. "Saw her tenth birthday and there was a calendar on the wall?"

Patrice laughs outright at this, because it's pretty funny, even in the midst of all this seriousness. The elbow from Des catches him lightly, and his only retaliation is a slap on the back before he starts towards the exit.

"Forging the date on her middle school transcripts?"

"Both," Felicity nods, finger tips pressed together in that sagely way that always feels a bit sinister. "I love them both."

Good job, evil cabal. Very good. With a newfound pep in her step, Felicity gestures toward the portal back to school. "Shall we?"

"Might be able to find a guy for that."

At Felicity's gesturing, Des starts forward easily. Easiest to defer to people who have a better idea what the hell's going on here.

"So. Hole in the sky, frozen people, glowing shit," Des lists, hooking his index finger around one, two three of the fingers on the opposite hand as he goes. "That all we worryin' about?"

"You don't already know a guy?"

Patrice moves along easily with his roommates, listening as Des recites their concerns. "Stupid smoke," he adds, wrinkling his nose as he recalls Wyatt's memory. "And potential attacks from vines and shit."

"And stuff that isn't what it really is and is actually goo," Felicity adds eloquently, recalling the Niffler that wasn't. As well as Kermie and Jupiter who tried to drown and kiss them. "Shit's wild."

Felicity, Patrice and Desmond completed the memory "Making the Cut"!

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

Up on the second floor, Peanut Jones was freed! Elsewhere in the auditorium, shale, a magimagicicada was freed!

Felicity, Patrice and Desmond each received 5 Tokens for participating in this memory.

They received an additional 2 Tokens for finding the linchpin before the cap!

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 2020-06-07 19:33 (UTC)

HE IS HERE

MEMORY: Making the Cut

MEMORY: Making the Cut

MEMORY: Making the Cut

MEMORY: Making the Cut

MEMORY: Making the Cut

MEMORY: Making the Cut

MEMORY: Making the Cut

MEMORY: Making the Cut

MEMORY: Making the Cut

MEMORY: Making the Cut

MEMORY: Making the Cut

MEMORY: Making the Cut

MEMORY: Making the Cut - TOKENS!