Welcome to Gaia! ::

"Did somebody mention the witch's council?"

Glen sniffled as he swung the die-ner door open with a 'bang', tugging Hellene in after him with one hand and his other hand holding the bag of Red Ghoul marshmallows Hellene had procured for him.

"My Aunty Glinda is on the witch's council."

He looked at Atomica.

"She's the most powerful witch in Oz, you know."

Glen then turned to Gryff.

"So what's this about targeting the circus to get our 'bros' back and does that include cute centaurs and what about the ghouls? Can we get them back too because I miss my Drakie already and how did you get my hext number Gryff? I didn't think you cared and oh. Right. Automa-Automat... Atomica."

Glen nodded and tapped a forefinger to the side of his nose in a gesture of co-conspiracy. It would seem that Glen was slowly regaining his composure and becoming his old self again, now that there was a plan in the works!

Jewels sat up from her moping half hearted home work when her icoffin pinged, she peered bleary eyed at it, frowning a little in confusion as she didn't recognise the number. Something about the circus? the die-ner? bringing coffee? She was pretty sure you couldn't bring coffee to a place that already served the stuff but she shrugged and fished through the papers on her desk to find her above ground pair of glasses. The tinted lenses were essential if she didn't want to be stumbling around blinded by the glare of the surface world.

She ran a hair hastily through her short blonde hair, then called to her father in the next cavern. "I'm going out for a while, got to save the day. May be quite perilous, some might say dangerous."

"mmm yeah sure, just be back by ten." Her father mumbled through fistfuls of stone chips, his eyes never leaving the flickering tv screen.

Jewels rolled her eyes, slung her satchel over one shoulder and headed up through the catacombs and finally, entered the die-ner.

Which one was Gryff? She scanned the faces, frowning.

"Well, i'm here." She shrugged and joined the small group forming around the surly looking hippogriff.

JD skidded up to the die-ner, his slick mix of Catty Noir's new single blasting so loudly that the windows rumbled with every beat. He'd called in a few moments before to order his usual pork roar and cheese sand-witch, and as he walked into the establishment his phone buzzed in his pocket. It was some monster he'd never met nor heard of named Gryff, but the message was urgent enough to pique his curiosity; and when he saw the crowd of monsters beginning to form in the corner of the die-ner, he knew where he had to be.

JD grabbed his sand-witch from the counter with a wink to the bee ghoul and sauntered over to the corner table.

"I uh... I take it you're Gryff, bro?" He stared at the cryptster boo over the top of his sunglasses.

Slowly clopping into the Die-ner, Felix felt nervous.

He never thought one of his first friends at Monster High would just run off to the circus like that, not even telling anyone. They were supposed to be friends but he just ran off?

Tori was upset about her friends going off too, and instead of standing back, he wanted to help Tori get her friends back along with his own.

And that's why he came here.

He took a deep breath, trying to calm his nerves and headed towards the group of monsters huddled into one side of the Die-ner.

"So," he interrupted, "Gryff, what's your plan?"

They were a strange group, sitting near the back of the Die-Ner, but Draculaura could tell they were very busy and did a great job of keeping out of everyone's way as she served booberry pie and milkquakes to the various monsters as they sat down and shuffled themselves around Gryff and Atomica to listen.

Gryff didn't bother telling everyone how he got their hext numbers. That wasn't any of their business. But he did describe to them all in curt, exacting detail what happened between him, Atomica and Lin at the Cirque. Atomica's metallic hydrolics balled her hands into fists as she heard Gryff describe the dirty, low-down, totally bogus trick Hagetha Mistie and Bartleby Farnum had tried to pull on them.

When he finished, everymonster in the group seemed stunned at the sheer audacity of Farnum and Mistie. Atomica couldn't take it anymore. She stood up and slammed a fist onto the table.

"We gotta stop them!" Everything paused for a moment so that Draculaura could pull out the now-broken table and replace it with a new one. Oops. "I know what we can do. I'll go to the Cirque Sinistaire, power up my Atomic Death Ray-"

"No, I don't think that's prudent." Gryff cut her off. "We want to rescue MY gremlin...and the rest of the monsters, I guess, not reduce them to a smoking crater two miles wide."

"Oh." Atomica sat back down. "Well, then I'm out of ideas."

"Farnum teaming up with a witch means that OBVIOUSLY they're using a magical spell to turn everyone into circus mind-slaves. So we'll need a plan to figure out how to negate that." Gryff tented his long, slender fingers, clearly rather pleased at sitting at the head of a group of monsters hanging off of his every syllable.

"You mean a counter-spell?" Glen asked, still sniffling. "Every spell that powerful has an equally powerful counterspell. That's witching fundamentals."

"So, like...we want to sneak in and find this spell? That seems like a great way to get everyone captured. Well, everyone who can be affected by a mind-control spell, at any rate. Obvs, it wouldn't bother me with my superior positronic brain." Atomica buffed her fingers on her shirt and blew on them. It was so clawesome being artificial.

"No, you wouldn't be affected, would you? Neither would she-" Gryff pointed a claw at Layla Lamia. "Or she."

He pointed again at Melody Nocturna. "You all have natural immunity to mind persuasion."

"That's right!" Atomia gave off a bright, boastful smile. "We're the beast!"

"Yes..." Gryff agreed. "You'll be the beast distraction possible while the rest of us sneak into the circus and find the counter-spell."

"WHAT?!"

"You." Gryff pointed at Jewels Underne. "You're a mole-person. You know the tunnels of the catacombs. You'll lead 'Team Distraction.' Get everyone into the sparkliest, shiniest, most distracting outfits possible.'

He pointed at JD Leeds.

"You. Bro-thing. You're on Team Distraction. I'm going to assume strictly from your appearance that you're a DJ. Get music. Loud. Obnoxious. Tasteless. I'm sure you have plenty on-hand at all times. "

"You, you, and you." Gryff pointed at Felix Faun, Merabell Ice and Roswell Grey, whose names he had clearly never bothered to learn. "You're all on Team Distraction."

Atomica looked at her new team. Clearly, this time, she was on the A-squad. "We won't let you down, Gryff!"

"And you. Da West. You're with me on the infiltration team, since you know how counter-spells work." Gryff looked at his motley, obnoxious team of monsters most of whom he didn't care for. Was this it? Was it going to work? Would it be enough to get his gremlin back?

Oh my ghoul, i'm being useful! Jewels' mind raced with possibilities, bedazzling everyone? Why she couldn't think of anything more fun! But no, now wasn't time for fun, there was serious rescue to be done.
She raised a hand tentatively. "Uh.. Mr.. Gryff? W... what do we do if our distraction fails?" She shrank back into her seat under the Hippogriff's withering glare. "I... I mean.. not thatitwill but.. but.. " She fell silent, clasping and unclasping her hands anxiously. "i.. i'll just.. go get outfits ready.. " She dug her glue gun and portable glitteriser from her satchel, she never left home without either and scurried off to go make something shinier than a disco ball.

Oh there's nothing like a good bit of snark to light up the spark in the average witch!

In mid-wail, Glen s-l-o-w-l-y turned around and lowered the giant wad of tissues from his face and with one eye open, the other eyebrow arched, he peered at Gryff who leaned back in the booth rather nonchalantly.

"Hex-CUSE me? But who are you calling a half-wit you...you... you RUDE manster!?"

Okay, so Glen isn't exactly the best at being mean or name calling. It's not really in his nature.

And did a anyone else notice he glossed right over the crack at his diminutive height? Probably has something to do with his not even being remotely aware at being about the same height as Draculaura.

Glen stomped right over to the table and looked hard (or as hard as he could) up at Gryff and shook his finger.

"I've had quite a bit of shock over all this! I mean, what's the world coming to when you can't trust a witch!?"

Glen crossed his arms and huffed a short (ha!) breath.

"Why do mean normies and rude witches hafta make things so hard!?"

The speeding mole girl whizzed into action with her sewing and glueing. "What's going on?" She asked, rather clueless. "How will sparkly outfits help get Meme and Rona- Oooh! I like that colour!"

And with that, Ascreama happily got stuck in, glueing and stitching sequins to fabrics. "You know what this needs? Tassles!" She shook her arm around exaggeratedly as a pin cushion caught in her goopy elbow, flinging pins and needles across the room.