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

Well, if everybody else is jumping off this very specific bridge.

Lydia hops off of the ledge with a short breath through her nose, landing in the sea of plastic and wading over toward her classmates. "Potentially possessed, failing in their romantic relationships," she says, sweeping balls to both sides of her with cupped hands. "Adulthood's looking real promising."

"I better get possessed by something hotter than plants."

Tybalt muses, and now that all of his friends are in this pit as well, he does what his lizard brain (rat brain?) has wanted to throughout all of this, and crouches down, full head and shoulders covered, into the pit. He does keep a hand on his cricket bat.

Lydia's sifting through the gross plastic swamp nets her a plastic skipping rope. This could come in handy, maybe—good thing, too, because it seems like she'll be able to take this out of the memory with her.

Winter's kicking eventually proves fruitful, she finds a little purple terrycloth doll with cat ears and one eye. As soon as she brushes against it, it starts to glow gold. The linchpin has been located!

And with that found the memory begins again with several people jumping into the ball pit at once. It's a party! Kinda. Ms. Kwan, a be-polo-shirted employee, and the parent of the bully (who immediately wrenches her son away as soon as he's within arms reach) all head to the center of the ball pit. Between Ms. Kwan and the poor teenager just trying to help, they sift through a fossil record's worth of junk, eventually find the missing doll, but it's lot of gingerly poking round in ball pit hell before the teen girl in the red striped polo triumphantly pulls it from where it'd fallen, right in front of Winter.

Ms. Kwan thanks her profusely, scoops up her daughter and wades out of the ball pit.

Someone is laughing. Even though it's not that awful, it feels awful, and the source is immeditely evident: Ms. Kwan's husband.

With her daughter clinging to one arm, she brushes past him, knocking him in the shoulder with the other. The blow is both unexpected and far more forceful than it seems, because he topples over, face first into the ball pit as Melody Kwan walks out through the front door.

It stands open, now, leaving a way back to the auditorium.

[MEMORY COMPLETE! You may continue to thread here or leave through the portal.]

Tybalt, by the way, finds a sigil that plays smooth jazz whenever the holder is in a liminal space. And apparently this is a liminal space, because the paper emits some real Kenny G-esque shit.

Winter uses Ms. Kwan's toppled over ex as a ramp to step out of the ballpit. She wipes her bare feet on his back before jumping back down to the extremely 90s carpet and heading for the Chuck-E-Cheese-Wiz front door.

Lydia, Tybalt, Viola and Winter completed the memory "Ballpit"!

Upon emerging from the memory out into the auditorium, the portal snapped shut behind them. Any of the items they found inside remained on their person when they left!

Elsewhere in the auditorium, Administrator Kwan was freed!

Lydia, Tybalt, Viola and Winter each received 5 Tokens for completing the memory!

They received an additional 1 Token for finding the linchpin before leaving!

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

HE IS HERE

MEMORY: Ballpit

MEMORY: Ballpit

MEMORY: Ballpit

MEMORY: Ballpit

MEMORY: Ballpit

MEMORY: Ballpit - TOKENS!