Welcome to Gaia! ::

WELCOME
To your worse nightmare

"Hello students! I'm Professor Malcolm, and I'll be your teacher for the new class 'Minipet Training'. If you're tired of your pet always peeing in your favorite pair of shoes or making a mess of your room with their claws/teeth/tentacles/other parts of the body, you should bring said pet to the class and hopefully, it'll gradually behave better! For now, the number of pets you can bring to class is one, unless you have a really good reason why you have to bring more... Like if they're joined at the hip or something."

- Announcement over Ickycom

The classroom in question is rather big with pale green walls and soft carpeted floors that makes it feel very much like grass. It is also filled with potted plants - a lot of potted plants. If not for the sign on the door that says "MINIPET TRAINING 1.1", one might think that they had stepped into the wrong class by mistake. A shoe rack sits at the side of the entrance with a corkboard above it; while something like that would normally not get noticed, this corkboard has two spotlights focusing on it, like an art piece in a museum. On it, a piece of paper reads "Please take off your footwear today and enter barefooted."

Just as you think the classroom can't get any weirder, you see that the lights had been dimmed and that the main source of light is a campfire burning in the middle of the room. The area surrounding the fire is the only place in the whole room without the soft carpeting. There is a stack of dried wood in the corner (probably to feed the fire with) and several stools set around the campfire, within the part of the floor that is not carpeted, each with a small pillow in front of it.

The only "normal" looking classroom object was the whiteboard on the classroom wall on the left-hand side of the entrance, with the words "Welcome, please sign in!" written in cursive letterings on it. Next to the obnoxiously huge text is a long slip of paper titled 'Sign up sheet', a drawing of the top view of the campfire and the 25 stools around it... Seems like you have to decide where to sit quickly!

All in all, the environment was set up to be warm and inviting... But you can't shake the feeling that you're being watched. Still, where is the teacher?

The Sign-up sheet... It looks kind of ugly - whoever did this probably forgot to use a typewriter so that the words are actually neat. Still, you have to give the teacher some effort points; knowing where you're seated will make it easier for him to remember your face and your name. At least, that must be the reason for this unconventional Sign-up sheet, right?

You just hope he's not playing with you... This class had been a hassle so far, and it hadn't even started yet.

[Please type/write out the name of your student on the seat he/she is going to sit on. :3

The campfire is not that big, so your student can still hear a student seated directly opposite of you when they're speaking, but he/she might not be able to see that student's face since it'll be blocked by the fire!]

UPDATE: Merope and Aymet, in a bid to hide from the almighty campfire, had moved the shoe rack. Go ahead and use the new sign-up sheet made by Mau/Imp. xDDD

Amrita was very, very unhappy. Death Charm wouldn't listen to her and he kept following her everywhere. It was getting harder and harder to trick the mini fire beast into getting locked into the room, and even worse when it came to not letting it set things on fire. Sure half of the time DC did it by accident by sneezing or something, but to the little Vetala? It was a deliberate threat on her life.

When she heard about this class she knew she had to go, and the warning about going barefoot was perfect for her; she didn't wear shoes anyway! DC had been put on a fireproof leash and collar with the other end looped several times over the Vetala's wrist. At first it wasn't needed as the creature trotted at her side without needing to be prompted, but when she got into the room it became her curse.

There was a fire there. In the middle of the room. Fire.

Terror gripped her and she swallowed hard, about to turn right back around when her Death Charm had something else in mind; he pulled her in against her will, and chose her seat for her by laying down in front of it and not budging.

She sat behind DC, trying her best to stay put and to not interrupt the class by shrieking. While she may not have made a noise, her wide-eyed expression spoke volumes. she was terrified.

The instant Maritess had heard about this class, she knew she had to sign up for it. And naturally she knew the perfect minipet to bring along. Or rather Trixie knew it was the perfect minipet to be brought along. And it made it very, very, very clear about this. Namely by wrapping its many, many tentacles around Tess's torso. Or what's left of it.

When she arrived her first thought was Oh hey, fire. Wait. FIRE WITH NO BARRIER?!?! and promptly clung to the purple tentacle while she stay aloft. Her minipet clung happily, mistaking it for a hug, one of its many mouths grinning happily at the open display of affection from its owner.

Audibly swallowing, Tess chose a seat that was far, far away from the fire. She had no shoes to leave. And no feet to be barefoot with but she hoped that wouldn't be taken against her.

The Vetala's gaze was torn from the fire long enough to see two undead boils move a shoe rack to sit behind. A safe place from the fire! But...Death Charm! Well, DC would just have to deal. Frowning, the little Vetala frantically tried to free herself from the leash, and the moment she was able she got up, backed up, and walked in as wide of a circle as she could around the fire, grabbing Tess in the process. Tess was Undead, she was going to save her friend! ...And get a clinging post out of it! Together with her friend, she took a seat next to Aymet.

Death Charm stayed near the fire, looking behind himself as his Master went running briskly walking. Huh. Making horrible, rumbling noises that were meant to be purrs it got to it's clawed paws and trotted after the undead ghouls, staring at the barrier before laying himself down in front of it. It was close to the fire and near enough to Amrita to be happy, and far away enough from the Undead to hopefully make them happy.

When Gabrian had heard about the Minipet Training class, he'd bowed to be first in line. Or something like that. It all honesty, it wasn't like he really needed it, for the most part, seeing as how he got along just fine with most, if not all of his minipets, barring a few instances (like the disastrous birth of the Reindeer and the Death Charm).

As such, despite wanting to attend the class, he'd found himself slightly unsure of which pet to bring with him. While it was true that both the Deer and the Death charm had caused chaos when they'd 'hatched', both pets had settled in quite nicely. The deer was, in fact, extremely sweet, if not very strong (which was, in fact, Gabrian's only complaint - he had a slight difficulty keeping her out of trouble due to it, but she did mean well). Seth, the Death Charm, had turned out to be a rather languid pet; mostly no nonsense and content to sit on his lap as he read or did homework - so long no one bothered him when he did not want to, and no one insulted him.

That left him with little choice, seeing as how his Wishing pets were well behaved and his Scareons were almost always on their best behavior. That was, until he'd spotted the more rambunctious of his two Floresces peeking out of the water tank, almost smirking at him. The nix had swiftly decided it was his Floresce , Davy, whom probably most needed to assist this class with him.

When he walked into the class with the Floresce wrapped around his neck and shoulders, Gabrian blinked; well, this was the most unconventional class he'd seen yet. And he'd been in a handful of them so far! His gaze went from the fire... to the notice pinned up on the board, and then to his feet before he let out a soft sigh and easily took them off, "Where in Jack's name is the shoe ra..." he cut himself off as he spotted it (and the students hiding behind it) to the side, "Nevermind," he held his shoes in one hand and walked over to the sign up sheet, scribbling his name on it before taking a seat. He didn't look particularly bothered by the fire, nor did the Floresce, though the fish-snake pet did look rather bored, which was never a good sign.

There were signs of huffing and puffing down the hallway, which seemed to continue to grow in volume until it's owner appeared at the doorway, seemly tired and out of breath. The reason? Astra had been trying to drag her non-obedient shenlong ryu to the new class she had heard about. She had tied the thing to a leash, and was trying to drag it into the classroom and take a seat. Only problem was, the minipet had refused to go along with her, and had promptly dug it's claws into the ground with a slight snarl. Which was why she was so tired now, having had to drag it from her dorm all the way to the classroom.

Although, as she looked around the room, she found that the other occupants of the classroom...were hiding behind a shoe rack. Why were they hiding- OH! yes, Undead were afraid of fire. And there was a big campfire in the middle of the room. Aha. She was beginning to wonder if she should drag a stool to sit with them (being the only student around a campfire? not always a good thing...), but She saw there was someone else near it. Oh...That was the guy from her form and faces class! "Hello gabrian!" she said to the boil and went to go take a seat. Or at least tried to, but Ryu was still not going to budge. "Sigh..." Being short was a royal pain in the butt sometimes..

While she pondered how to get her pet towards one of the stools, she read the 'take off footwear" sign, and thinking nothing of it took off her sandals.

When Professor Malcolm's message sounded over the ickycom, West's immediate response was to leap to his feet and storm out of the cafeteria. He might have also punched some unsuspecting nerd in frustration on the way out, but that kid sure as Jack wasn't going to tell anyone West had done so, so no one had to know about all that.

Where had this Malcolm jerk been last month when he had signed his life over to Hadiyya in exchange for dubious control over his pets? The guy hadn't been here, that's all West knew. b*****d. No one had ever warned him that demon marks itched. Or maybe that irritation was just the chafing of his invisible b***h leash.

The fact remained that his pets were fairly well behaved now, at least the three that insisted on staying in his room. Stench and Lord Jerkwater, once masters of pooping in shoes, now stood on their hind legs and pirouetted daintily in response to a series of elaborate snaps. His phoenix scareon, Master, had always been obedient, but she was also a special case. Reluctant as he was to admit it, West actually enjoyed having her around.

Still, he hadn't taught any of them to be the way they were, it had all been Yaya and her understanding and niceness that they had responded to. Peh.

There was one pet he could count on through all this, one pet who still set things on fire and peed on his homework for no good reason: Hate. When the flamey red bull wasn't off wandering school grounds, West still sometimes found him flopped in front of the closet in his dorm as if he was waiting for someone to come take him away. Whatever. Hate was conveniently present at the moment and the animal was coming to class with his master.

Upon entering the classroom, West didn't see anyone right away, not until his eyes adjusted to the flickering flames at its center. It appeared a large number of his peers were fire-wusses. The avarice demon grinned then lugged Hate over to a stool as far away from everyone else as he could manage. He pulled off his boots and left them in a small pile next to the bull.