The Coffin Bean

[Vanissha de la Luz]

Ascreama Poweurgh

Ascreama looked up from her book as Vanni walked away, too preoccupied to notice what was said. "I'm sorry, I was totally spaced out, what did she say?"

She glanced down at the note, ignoring Ronan's flabberghosted look. "Puppies! Kawaii!" She exclaimed, twisting around to see the puppy in a bag, "Aww that's just too cute! Makes me all melty!"
She fished a glitter covered pen and a piece of pink note paper out of her satchel and scribbled down a number.
"Maybe Meme could do it? Ascreama pondered, "She's trained tonnes of circus employees!" she counted them out on her pink fingers; "Lions, fleas, skelephants, monk-eeks, sharks and even spiders! I'm sure a tiny adorable dog won't be a bother."

She scooped the remaining treats into a paper bag and stood up with Ronan after Dashner returned. "I'm coming with! Meme's trying out too." Smiling as she handed over the number to Vanni.

"He's very friendly." She cuddles with Quicksilver as Ascreama gushes over her puppy. And she'd even found her a trainer!

"Phantastic! If that's were Meme is, then I'm going too! I'll have to talk to her after she tried out."

She followed the group as they went to the Catacombs  

[Glen da West]

Glen walks into the Coffin Bean, along with Toralei Stripe and the ever present werecat twins, Meowlody and Purrsephone. Each of them were carrying the cases that held their collection of Spellbound playing cards.

Toralei and Glen are chatting as they enter, Glen's eyes on the clipboard in his hands as his own card collection was tucked in a small briefcase under his arms.

"So how many new sign ups did we get this year?" Toralei asked.

"A lot!" Glen answered, smiling eagerly. "Hasta be at least a dozen new boos and ghouls interested in joining the club, on top of the usual club members. `Cept for Howleen, of course. I still can't believe she quit." He shook his head sadly.

"Mm, we're better off without her." Toralei replied snidely.

Glen looked up at her and shrugged. "She's a clawesome player!"

Toralei looked back at the twins, both who rolled their eyes. She herself shrugged. "So she is, but if she thinks she's too good for us now then we're better off just replacing her with fresh blood."

"Is everything ready?" Glen asked Clawdeen who worked there after school, with a smile. Knowing that the CB got busy after school, he had the foresight to ask Clawdeen if they would be allowed to reserve the back area of the ol' Bean for the Spellbound tryouts and she said she's talk to her manager.

"My boss said you guys could use the back area of the place." She pointed a thumb toward the corner that led to the far off corner where there were several tables spaced out and ready for use.

"Hexcellent!" Glen looked at the three werecats. "I'll get the drinks if you wanna set things up?"

"Right." Toralei responded with a purr. "Our usual."

The werecats sashayed back to the area they would be playing while Clawdeen followed her with flashing eyes before turning back to the smiling Glen.

"How you stand her is beyond me."  

[Kai Merha]

Kai arrived in short order and waved at the group growing in the back area of the Coffin Bean.

"Glen!" Kai called to the diminutive witch boy. "You're supposed to talk to my dad before he leaves town."

Kai went up to the counter to place an order. Clawdeen saw him coming and quickly pushed a new ghoul forward to take his order, running into the back room. The new ghoul, a triclops, blinked pleasantly at Kai.

"Welcome to the Coffin Bean, can I take your order? Would you like to try our new fall favorite, the Pumpkin Scream Boolatte? Or how about a refreshing Chilled-to-the-Bone Creepy Cranscerry Cooler?"

In the back, Clawdeen felt a twinge of guilt at having the new ghoul take the fall for a Kai Merha order, but she quickly buried it under whipped scream and chocolate sprinkles.  

[Ronan Aalto]

Ronan entered the coffin bean and looked around for the group, his eyes settling on the striking emerald complexion of Glen. He may be short, but amongst the group he stood out.

A little hesitantly, Ronan approached the group. He hadn't played Spellbound in quite some time, could he even remember all the rules? What rules had changed? What edition were they even on now? He knew he had a terrible competitive streak, but he also knew he was extremely rusty, was he about to make a great fool of himself?
Anxiously, he waved to the assembled, managing a faint smile.

"Good afternoon." The way that ginger werecat was staring at him made him particularly uneasy.  

[Dashner Hawke]

"I survived the first day of schooool!!"

Dashner almost literally jumped through the Coffin Bean door. He looked around- Ronan was with his Spellbound bulb friends,and they'd best not be disturbed. He decided it'd be best to text his beasties Roswell and Rorrim to see if they wanted to fang.

To: Rory and Grey
Yo yo! We survived the first day of school! Want to get a drink at the Coffin Bean with me? :3  

[Kai Merha]

"Uh...........ummmm......"

There was now a line of 3 monsters behind Kai.

"I'll take a.......no, wait.......ummmm......"  

[Glen da West]

"Excuse me?"

Ever the astute beastie (Toralei had pointed out if Kai didn't get his drink then they'd never get the games started), Glen got up from where he had set to play against Skelly and hurried over to lend a hand, or a claw, to the indecisive Kai (and more so, to the furrista).

The poor frazzled triclops ghoul looked from Kai to his left where Glen had maneuvered himself to.

"He'll have a salted venti moancha coffinccino with soy moancha drizzle, matcha powder, moantein powder, scaramel boolée topping, three strawscaries, scaramel drizzle ackuccino chips and vanilla bean powder."

Glen looked at Kai and winked.

"When in doubt, get a bit of everything! Ha!"  

[Ronan Aalto]

Ronan just stood there awkwardly,not really sure what he was supposed to do.

Toralei looked the Selkie boy up and down then purred. "You're playing Kai aren't you?"

"Uh... yes?" He was pretty sure that was correct, glancing over toward where the Chimera was agonising over his order.

"Purrrfect... " She smirked and the twins burst into a fit of giggles. Ronan just stared at them baffled. Unsure quite what was so funny. At length the trio composed themselves enough to indicate a table where Ronan should sit, telling him his opponent would "be along shortly" and starting to laugh again.

Ronan frowned, but took a seat and started sorting through his deck while he waited.  

[Kai Merha]

"Hey!" Kai sat down opposite Ronan with a giant cup heaping full of stuff. "Sorry for the delay. You ready to get started?"

Kai opened the bag he kept his Spellbound stuff in. He pulled out the 13-sided dice, the hit point tokens, the play mat and his deck of cards. He handed Ronan the dice cup and assembled the disk launcher. Once that was put together, all that was left was to assemble the Ouija board, and the game could begin.

"We're playing fifth generation rules right now, because Glen found thirty-six fundamental errors with version 5.2 and he's waiting for the game designers to respond to his e-maul. So that means when your cards get resurrected from the graveyard, you have to sacrifice a mana each time or else you wind up having to draw from your life point reserve, unless you have the Inversion Excellente card, of course."

Kai handed his deck to Ronan to shuffle and took Ronan's himself. He shuffled the cards and handed them back.

"Normally, we go by tourney rules and draw cards from the bottom of the pile to determine who goes first, you know the first one to draw an Igneous card gets to start the game...but since this is pretty much practice and you're new, why don't you go first?"  

[Rorrim Rory Bludworth]

Rory walked out of the boo's bathroom looking sort of tired. It wasn't because of anything he did IN the bathroom, that just happened to be the location of the nearest mirror to step through. He was tired because like the students of Monster High, he had started school today as well. Tombschooling with his mother didn't seem to him to be anywhere near as interesting or as fun as the school all of his friends went to. For starters, they probably didn't have to sit through a marathon four hours of Hiss-tory at a time. They also probably didn't get into long discussion/fights with their teachers about how badly they wanted to go to another school. Rory sighed and tried to put the day behind him.

"Dash!" Rory waved at his beastie. "Way to go on surviving the first day! Tell me everything!"  

[Ronan Aalto]

Having shuffled Kai's deck twice, he returned it and took his own cards, nodding at the explanation. "Thirty six? That is impressive. Fourth ed I believe had a good twenty four errors but the majority were patched fairly quick." He glanced sidelong at the twins who were still giggling to one another as they set up their own game. "What IS their problem?" He asked Kai, frowning a little.  

[Kai Merha]

Kai shrugged. "They're like that every time I see them here. I don't know. I didn't really think trading card games were their style, but I think they do it because it keeps their 'getting-one-up-on-other-monsters' skills sharp."

Kai stacked the four requisite tombstones in the middle of the playfield and made sure that the golden femur was within plain view of both of them on top of the cursed sarcophagus.

"Ready?"  

[Ronan Aalto]

He glanced to the werecats one last time, then nodded. "I think so. It has been a while so do bear with me." He rolled the dice and drew his hand, studying the cards critically for a minute or two before carefully placing down a "Smoke Belching Volcano" (Appropriate given his run in with a similar albeit smaller model earlier) and tapping it, before flipping a second card into the air. The card landed face up and he sighed in relief. Slapping a hand down on top of the card and pushing it toward one of the tombstones.
"Your turn."  

[Kai Merha]

Kai inhaled slowly. He was still a Spellbound novice, but he could tell that was a REALLY good move. If the card had landed facedown, they'd be picking up tombstone icons everywhere.

Kai picked up the dice and gave it a roll.

"One!" Okay, that meant he could draw only one card. Kai looked at the card. It was a beautiful pastoral scene with a skeleton sheep eating some grass. With no real choice, Kai placed the card on the mat in the graveyard.

"I play 'Ewe Gotta Be Kidding,' untapped. This card summons the skeleton sheep." Kai picked up one of the blue tokens and set it on Ronan's side of the field. "Um, let's see....untapped means that it's currently drawing life energy from the blood pool, so that makes it a Reanimated, which means that it can't be killed unless you have a crystal of light card to play immediately. If you don't, then the skeleton sheep activates Multiply in three turns."  

[Dashner Hawke]

Rorrim Rory Bludworth

"Dash! Way to go on surviving the first day! Tell me everything!"

"Rory! Bro!" Dashner gestured toward a empty booth. He sat down in exhaustion.
"Bro, I'm like SO hexhausted. The first day is the most boring, all they do is go on and on about rules.

He decided he wild skip the part about Marceline trying to summon Rorrim in the MIDDLE of Home Ick class... That stirred him the most.

"How was yours?"