St George's Boarding School (IC)

[Raine_Sage]

Spoiler: OOC

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You don't have to roll anything if your character is content to more or less go along with things. Generally you only roll when you're looking for a specific outcome or you want to gain leverage over another character (or in the case of shut down you want them to lose some leverage over you). I failed my roll so Nobody gets a string but Victor also gets to not be awkward in the moment. If victor didn't want to go and wanted Wynne to stop bringing it up then you might roll shut down for example.

"Sure, by all means." she smiles a little before turning and heading back in the direction of the main building.

-----

The library is quiet, as usual, tall bookshelves serving as privacy barriers and sound muffled by paper and carpeting. More importantly though it was largely empty, with the first day of school lacking any Major assignments that would require research in here. She finds them a table tucked in a corner, far from any doors. "So uh... you're... dead right? I mean, I didn't just imagine that whole thing at the quarry?"

[Ezeze]

Siobhan
Nana maintains her skeptical expression, but does seem somewhat mollified by Siobhan saying that the boy rushed in to help her.

She bites into the side of her cheek, which Siobhan knows is an indication that she is thinking.

T'ere be loads of nasties t'at like gals like you n' I. T'e fair folk especially. Which is why I don't want you dancing around any standing stones she waves one finger menacingly.

But I don't know if t'at's what your beastie is wit' oot seeing it. Your boy has a drawing, you say? Might be he's not totally useless. I'll get it from him.

---

Cassandra
What, that's it? Brittany asks. Here we were thinking something interesting had happened.

---

Deacon
Flipping through your phone you don't find anything that matches the description of the beast exactly. But you find something. Distorted, confused pictures of things made of inky-blackness much like what the beast was made of. You'd think they were just errors in the image if you hadn't seen the thing so closely with your own eyes. After a few moments looking at these you realize that some of the shapes repeat themselves. Then you see an un-sourced picture of that same spider-quadraped. It occurs to you to try and count how many distinct shapes there are. It takes a few moments. You count six... no, wait, seven.

You don't know what that means, but then the door you are leaning against opens and you fall backwards.

---

Deacon and Siobhan
Nana opens the hospital room door and Deacon falls backwards into the room. It's not a long fall - he had been sitting and leaning his back against the door.

Nana is not amused. What did your mother teach you, boy? she demands. Didn't teach you not to mess with t'e fair folk, didn't teach you not to listen at doors.

She presses her lips together, but holds back on any further vitriol for the moment.

Siobhan says you tried to protect her from t'e octopus? And that you drew it? Let Nana see. Deacon's permission to call her 'Nana' seems to have been reinstated, at least for the moment. The older O'Connor seems to run hot and cold even more than her granddaughter. She reaches out her hand for the drawing.

[Ionbound]

Cassandra grumbles something impolite about Brittany under her breath, then shrugs and says, "Yeah. What were you hoping someone would die?"

[Ezeze]

Cassandra
Of course not! Brittany snaps back.

Emma adds what kind of monsters do you think we are?

before Brittany starts talking again there has already been one fight. We thought maybe there had been another.

[Amaril]

It's like a punch to the gut. All of a sudden, the anger is gone again, leaving behind exhaustion and shame. A choked sob sends a tear rolling down Sam's face as he slumps against his branch. "S-sorry..." he mumbles, turning to hide his face. "I-I shouldn't have..." His voice fails him, the ground seeming to pitch and forcing him to cling to the tree.

"I'm a werewolf."

The instant the words are out, panic grips him. What the f***? Why would you-- His brain catches up a second later. This morning, his first expectation if he'd blurted that out to someone would've been that they'd assume he was kidding, or crazy. But Summer saw that thing, same as he did. He's willing to bet she's feeling pretty open-minded right now--she seems like that type anyway. But what if she does believe it? Will she think you're a monster? Will she run away? Tell the others?

He watches her silently, paralyzed by uncertainty, fear written all over his face as he awaits her response.

Spoiler: Action

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Sam will give himself to Summer, "himself" in this case being his trust and his deepest secret.

[Squadfather42]

Victor cant help, but laugh a little at Wynn's question. There was something about the innocence in this one question that set him at ease.

"I'm not sure what you'd really call it, but yes in a sense I am. Granted, I died and came back that day you saw me at the quarry. Yet I had died several times before that. I'm honestly not sure about how this all started either. I figured, I had obviously died, but I have no memory of it."

Victor is genuinely both relieved and happy that he has someone to be with, and talk about how he is the way he is. Trying to go slow and not overwhelm Wynn with information, Victor lays his hands on the table, leans forward a little, and forces himself to slow down.

"In case you were wondering, I can still feel pain. I mean every time I die I feel the pain of the act itself, then after a while...I just wake up and literally put the pieces back together again. Take the quarry for instance, I died when I hit the rocks, yet I woke up and spent a couple minutes poping everything back into place. That was an unpleasant feeling each and every time."

Victor begins to nervously drum his fingers on the table, as he tries to find the right words to go on.

"You're the only person that knows. My own family doesn't know about this. Granted, I love taking risks for the sheer thrill of it, yet I'm terrified that if word got out I'd be labeled a freak...or worse."

[Raine_Sage]

"Oh." He was obviously solid, still had a body, could still get a black eye. For that matter so could she probably, but it always felt more like the projection of an injury than an actual scrape. So he was like a zombie then? Only without craving brains presumably, just adrenaline.

"I'm dead too." She didn't feel like there was really any point in hiding it from him. What was he going to do, scream and run away? Though saying the words out loud felt uncomfortably weighty. Too solid. Too real. She pushed forward trying not to dwell on it. "I mean, not like you are. You can still leave. I'm stuck here."

[Mr. E]

Summer looks at Sam appraisingly, watching him with an unreadable expression.

"I suppose that's not really that surprising. Not after today."

She admires the way leaves cast shadows on his face, speckling Sam with light and shade. Closing her eyes, Summer feels the comfortable shift of the trees as they rustle in the breeze.

"Guess I better not take you star-gazing on nights of the full moon, then. Or is that part a myth? What do werewolves actually do?"

[Squadfather42]

Of all of the things Wynn could have said, admitting that she was dead was definitely not what Victor had expected.

"What do you mean you're dead and that you're stuck here? I don't mean to pry."

Victor finds himself intrigued and even more interested in Wynn.

[Amaril]

Relief makes Sam's head spin; he almost loses his grip on the branch again. He can't help but crack a grin at Summer's response. "It's not like most people think," he says, "but we probably should avoid the full moon."

It's still hard to look at her, so he watches a cloud that looks a little like a castle drift past. "I used to get picked on a lot," he hears himself saying, feeling as though a floodgate has been opened and he's powerless to stop himself now. "'Cause I was weak, and too scared to stick up for myself...and then I got...y'know, turned, I guess, and I thought it was, like, the best thing ever. Like, I wasn't the loser anymore, people couldn't f*** with me. And I said I wasn't gonna let anybody else go through what I did..." His chest rattles as he catches his breath. "I can beat anybody who's human, but I just...I saw that thing, and..."

He realizes there are tears running down his cheeks again. He really should look Summer in the eye, but he keeps watching the clouds. "I just don't wanna go back to being like that, y'know? I don't want people to get hurt 'cause I can't stop it..."

[Raine_Sage]

"I'm a ghost I guess? I mean I think I am. I'm not sure what else I would be." she replies softly. She closes her eyes and her whole body takes on the sort of shimmery translucent quality one might expect more from a spirit, though she becomes solid again when she opens then. She can disappear entirely if she wants, but she doesn't like doing it. It's always so hard to come back from.

"I never thought I'd ever meet someone else in the same situation though. I mean, not exactly but still... how many dead people do you honestly expect to ever meet?"

[Ionbound]

Cassandra shakes her head and says, already weary of the conversation, "Nothing so dramatic. Is that all?"

[Ezeze]

Cassandra.

Brittany presses her lips together into a thin line, her expression a mixture of disappointment and frustration.

I guess so.

[Squadfather42]

Victor is more than a little surprised by Wynn's revelation. More so when she turns translucent.

"I can see your point, I never expected to meet anyone that could be similar to me. I'm glad that I did though."

There have been only a few times in his life that Victor didn't know what to say ir do. This instance leaves them all behind.

Not realizing what he's doing, Victor finds his hand slowly sliding dangerously close to Wynn's.

"Do you remember how you came to be a ghost? You don't have to answer if you don't want to. No matter how hard I try, I can't remember anything about that moment of my life."

[Mr. E]

"Sometimes-" Summer shuffles along the branch to sit next to Sam. She goes to reach up and sling an arm around his shoulders, but of course it is the wrong damn arm.

"-Sometimes, there are no action heroes, no big men with all American accents.
Sometimes Superman won't come down from the sky and save us all. Sometimes all that's left is the broken people standing in the mud. Sometimes there's nobody but you an' me."

She shrugs expansively, looking out at the cloud that looks like a castle, although it looks more like a pyramid now.

"Nobody ever asked you to fight it alone. So don't. I'll help, as I can. When I hear things, I'll tell you." There's something very certain about the 'when' in her last sentence. "No doubt there's others who'll give a hand, too."

She pauses, then asks another question as it rises to the surface of her mind. "Incidentally, are you sexually attracted to Wynne?"

[Amaril]

Sam doesn't miss Summer's attempt at getting close, and while he doesn't have it in him to help her make it work at the moment, it brings a much more genuine smile to his face. How can she say such stupid s*** and make it sound so real?

He opens his mouth to profess his gratitude and pledge his friendship and probably more sappy stuff like that, just as Summer completely derails the moment. "What?" It takes him a second of blank staring to realize what she's asked. "No! No, I--I have a girlfriend."

[Mr. E]

"Ah, so you talk to her because you want to save the universe, then."

Summer nods seriously, without even a trace of sarcasm in her voice. She looks up at the sky above her."Good, that makes everything easier. I don't know what I would have done otherwise." She sits there for a few moments more, then speaks once more.

"I should study soon, I really should."

Making no move, however, she sits in the trees, enjoying the afternoon sun.

[Raine_Sage]

Wynne pulls her hand away, drawing her knees up to her chest, suddenly looking very small indeed. "If it's all the same to you, I'd really rather not talk about it."

[Zero Prime]

Deacon Frost, the Fae
Harm: 0 of 4
Conditions: None.

The Abyss was like throwing an offering down a well, hoping it was accepted, that you'd find what you needed, without drawing the attention of the darkness and corruption that lurked in the shadows found there.

He studied the pictures, a growing sense of unease, of otherworldly, wrongness, growing in him. Suddenly he was encompassed by a wave of vertigo as his world turned, and he stumbled through the wall ... WHAM!

Not the wall, a door. He'd been leaning against the door of Siobahn's room, he shook his head, confused, disoriented. Then her 'nan plunged into his field of vision, standing guard over his fallen form.

What did your mother teach you, boy? she demands. Didn't teach you not to mess with t'e fair folk, didn't teach you not to listen at doors.

She presses her lips together, but holds back on any further vitriol for the moment.

Siobhan says you tried to protect her from t'e octopus? And that you drew it? Let Nana see.

The confused look that flashed across his handsome face was nothing if not amusing, "Listen, wha-?" It was then that he fully registered the elder O'Conner's words. The octopus thing. That meant that Siobahn had informed her of the truth, and something deep inside him told him that he too would be compelled to do the same.

He gingerly rose from the floor, his abdomen still tight from the stitches. He slid the chair he'd upended back into the hall and closed the door, staring straight into the eyes of Siobahn's 'nan. "That 'thing' from yesterday afternoon was *not* natural, I thought your granddaughter and I were done when it jumped at us, I closed my eyes, waiting for the impact, trying to shield your granddaughter as best I could." He sighed, "The impact never came. It disappeared, jumped through the walls, something." He shrugged, helplessly. "So, No," he rose his voice, "I wasn't listening in on your conversation, I was making sure that damn thing didn't come back." He was angry now, at the accusation, and upset, and scared. That thing had unnerved him, and he wanted to be able to protect Siobahn, his friends, but he didn't know how.

"I found these," he quickly scrolled through the images he'd found on his phone, "but I'm not sure how much you can really make out." He put the phone down on the bed, and went through his art portfolio withdrawing the crumpled picture sketched hastily in charcoal and blood. He looked at it for a moment, and passed it to the Siobahn's 'nan.

"This is, uhhh," he ran a hand nervously through his hair, "might be more clear, but it ... uhh, got some blood on it." He looked down slightly. "Sorry ..."

[Ezeze]

Deacon and Siobhan
Ain't got to tell me t'wern't natural- she seems on the cusp of calling you 'boy' again, but relents. What was your name again?

Nana barely glances at the phone, flipping through a few pictures then handing it back to Deacon.

She lingers much longer over the drawn picture, her eyes on the paper for full minutes.

[spinningdice]

Siobhan takes the opportunity of Nana's distraction by the images to slip her hand into Deacon's and give him an encouraging smile.

[Squadfather42]

Victor looks at Wynn with genuine concern on his face.

"It's okay, we can talk about something else. What are you looking forward to this school year? I'm not quite sure what to expect."

[Amaril]

Even though he has no idea what Summer is talking about, Sam can't help but snicker. "Well, I mean, I'd rather the universe keep being a thing. All my stuff's there."

When she mentions studying, he waits for her to start making her way back to the ground, but as the seconds pass and she stays put, something nags at him. "Hey..." He hesitates, trying to put the words together right. "I'm not sure what you meant before, but...whatever it is, you're not broken, ok? Don't say that."

He hesitates another beat. "You're really cool, y'know?"

[Zero Prime]

Deacon Frost, the Fae
Harm: 0 of 4
Conditions: None.

As Siobahn's 'nan asks him his name, his face blanched, absolutely mortified. He'd yet to introduce himself to his ... he looked at Siobahn, her voice echoing in his head, 'my boyfriend, my boyfriend,' he turned back towards her 'nan. "I'm sorry 'nan, this whole thing has me feeling off kilter, my name's Deacon." He paused, "Deacon Frost." He watched her scrutinize the sketch, and was suddenly keenly aware of his own blood mixed with the charcoals he'd used.

He remained standing, propped against the bed after his ignominious entrance by way of tumbling chair. As he waited he felt a slight nudge, Siobahn's hand sliding into his. It felt cool, not cold, and he was very conscious of the IV needle, but he squeezed gently, looking down at her and smiling, he leaned closer, switched her hand to his other hand, and brushed a limp lock of red from her face. He whispered softly, "You and your 'nan, you seem close.", he paused, considered, "that's the way it should be. It's," his brow wrinkled as he contemplated his next words, giving up he shrugged, "nice." His smile became a smirk, "Not the way I wanted to meet the family, but I'll take it."

[Ionbound]

Cassandra.

Brittany presses her lips together into a thin line, her expression a mixture of disappointment and frustration.

I guess so.

Cassandra pauses, then her eyes flash red as she points at Emma and says, "By the way, you really have to go to the bathroom, right? Don't just stand here on my account."

Spoiler: OOC

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Hypno on Emma: (2d6+2)[9]

[spinningdice]

"We are close, she's all I've had since my parents died, and to be honest, she's a better parent on her own than they were together." She speaks quietly so as not to disturb her nan's concentration, though in the close confines she can't speak softly enough to reach Deacon's ears alone. Her brow creases slightly as she processes his question properly, "What of your own family, you not close?"

[Mr. E]

"If you say so."

There's a drabness and a blandness to her voice in the same way that drabness and blandness conceal many ugly things. Summer shrugs her shoulders, suddenly unable to look Sam in the eye. She shuffles around on the branch, feeling uncomfortable without knowing why.

The afternoon sun that falls on the two of them becomes not enough to warm her, and she shivers slightly. Why do conversations have to discuss me, anyway?

[Ezeze]

Cassandra
I, uh, yeah Emma murmurs, her expression a mixture of confusion and alarm as her legs take her away from Cassandra and Brittany without her input.

Brittany raises an eyebrow as Cassandra walks away. She clearly thinks that is weird, but doesn't say anything.

[Ionbound]

Cassandra smirks as Emma walks off and says, "See ya later, Brit. Tell Talia I say hi." She turns on her heels and walks off, taking a bit of a circuitous route to the girl's bathroom where she commanded Emma to go. When she opens the door, should Emma be there, Cassandra checks a moment to make sure they're alone smiles fully, revealing her fangs. She widens her grin as she says to Emma, "Here's how this is gonna go. I'm going to feed, you get to stay alive if you promise not to tell anyone. Otherwise, I'm not making any promises myself..." She trails off, licking her lips with a hungry look in her now-red eyes.

[Zero Prime]

Deacon Frost, the Fae
Harm: 0 of 4
Conditions: None.

"We are close, she's all I've had since my parents died, and to be honest, she's a better parent on her own than they were together." She speaks quietly so as not to disturb her nan's concentration, though in the close confines she can't speak softly enough to reach Deacon's ears alone. Her brow creases slightly as she processes his question properly, "What of your own family, you not close?"

Deacon shook his head slowly, as he lowered himself to sit on the side of his bed as 'nan continued perusing his sketch. "No, it's not that," he pondered a moment, "at least not quite. My mom almost dropped her workload on the admissions office and flew down here when she found out about the ...," he looked sideways at Siobahn, "the attack." He shrugged, "She loves me, alot, and is very protective of me, but she ...," he sighed, "I've tried to ask her about my dad, but she always just shuts me down."

He squeezed her hand, and smiled his charming smile, "Look at me, the self absorbed ass, talking about how rough he had it with a single mother, and a scratch, while his girl grew up with her 'nan, and just got out of surgery." He smirked, "I'm pretty smooth eh?"