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Oh Where Oh where Oh where...? Ari half fluttered- half skipped towards her new school. Her dress trailed behind her as she silently buzzed around trying to remember where she was supposed to go. A silver dragonfly suddenly bumped into her nose. "This way! I found them!" It whispered in her head. "Oh thank goodness~"

Ari followed the Insect to the steps where she noticed two people- Wait... Are people considered people here? Or do I call them Monsters... Or would that be rude? The once frantic faerie now felt a bit unsure and reserved as she approached who she recognized as the Headmistress. "Um, Hello Again Head Mistress." She said glancing at the colorful figure next to her. "Sorry If I'm late I forgot where I was supposed to go." Again... The elfish girl had a bad habit of forgetting things...

Further in the coffin corridor, students mill about, doing their usual pre-class socializing and mingling, discussing the coming day, freakend, and all that each entrails.

Two of those very figures, cousins as it happens, are whispering near the Mad Science class room, their books tucked in their arms, and bits and baubles of their class project floating in the air nearby courtesy of Glen's magic. Heath Burns came running around the corner, and not seeing the floating pile of Mad Sciencey goodness, ran smack into them with a 'KLANG! and fell to the floor, dazed.

"Whoa! Scareful there Heath!" Rory blinked. "That looked awfully painful!"

"Yeah, where's the fire? Oh there it is! Ha!" Glen chuckled and then went back to his conversation with his cousin as Heath got up and wobbled the rest of the way to his locker.

"I just don't know about this." Rory fidgeted. "I've only been down in the Catacombs to watch SKRM. Just wandering around sounds dang..."

"It's not wandering around, cuz o' mine!" Glen interrupted, clapping a hand on Rory's shoulder in reassurance... his school books floating over to join the pile of his and Rory's... stuff. "It's hexploring!"

"There's a difference?" Rory blinked.

"Of course!" Glen chirped in his never ending source of positivity. "Wandering is pointless. Hexploring is ADVENTURE!"

"Oh..." Rory murmured, clearly unconvinced.

Glen went on, "Just think of how expansive the Catacombs are! All of the unhexplored nooks and crannies! Laboratories lost for ages untold! Why I bet a monster could get lost down there and remain undiscovered for centuries!"

Rory's wide, unblinking eyes stared at Glen who seemed oblivious to what he just stated.

"Well sure, Ari!" Kai pulled out the schedule that HH Bloodgood had given him before trotting off. "The way this school is arranged is actually a lot like a normie high school, at least the ones I've gone to. There are four periods in the morning, and four in the afternoon. Some of the really big classes, the cornertomb classes, take up two periods. Like Mad Science, which, incidentally, is right in this classroom here!"

They stopped in front of the double-reinforced blast doors that opened into the Mad Science lecture hall. Standing off to the side were several students involved in pre-class chatting, including one short, bouncing green boy and a taller, extremely shiny boy.

"Oh, hey, here's a couple of my bros. Ari, this is Glen da West. He's a son of a witch." Kai clasped a hand on the green boy, who turned around to look at Arillena. "And the shiny guy there is Rorrim Bludworth. He's the son of a mirror witch."

Kai leaned in close to Arillena.

"Bloody Mary." He added in, not wanting Rory to hear. He didn't like hearing his mother called that, after all, but that was probably the name Ari was going to be most familiar with.

Meanwhile, further down the hall...

Atomica Servo was annoyed. Partially, she was annoyed because it was still over three days away from Woestock, which was going to be the next BIG performance by her band, Atomica and the Rest...in Peace, but also partially because her Mad Science lab partner, Ronan Aalto, was suggesting something that she found EXTREMELY annoying.

Namely, that the two of them should talk about doing their assignment.

"According to the written assignment Mr. Hackington gave us," Ronan droned on, as Atomica unloaded her book bag into her locker. "We have to go down into the Catacombs, and hexplore until we find 'something suitably uhh-mazing or otherwise worthy of scientific examination.' With the end of the Scaremester looming, I want to get this assignment done as soon as possible..."

Ronan paused here, as if he was thinking something along the lines of 'and not have to deal with you anymore, ever again,' though Atomica didn't seem to pick up on this implication.

"And since you will be busy next week preparing for the Skulltimate Roller Maze final match, we should finish the assignment this week."

"Ugh, I already KNOW all of that, why did you bother telling me again?! I have a perfectly flawless memory core, you know!" Atomica answered, much more grumpily than she usually would have. Normally, Atomica couldn't decide if Ronan was secretly insanely in love with her and trying to hide it with grumpy indifference, or if he really was grumpily indifferent, but today his matter-of-fact style grated her worse than sticking a floppy disk into a CD drive. "I'm just...considering my options for the assignment, that's all!"

"You mean the option Mr. Hackington gave you of either doing the assignment, or not doing it and failing the course?" Ronan asked, in an astonishingly dry tone for a monster used to hanging out in ice water. "If you don't complete the assignment, then I'll get an F too."

Thus was the logic loop of having lab partners. Atomica did the calculations. The catacombs assignment was half their grade. Failing it meant failing the whole course and having to retake it next Scaremester. And if it was her fault Ronan failed too, he would probably aim laser-guided grump at her for the rest of her half-life.

Ugh.

"Ugh, all right, like, FINE!" Atomica slammed her locker shut. "We'll go down into the Catacombs after school today and do the dumb exploration for the dumb grade for the dumb class, okay? Even though I have sixty-four quinTILLION better things to do than root around in a bunch of easy-to-get-lost-in caverns and cooridors where my GPS totally doesn't even work because it's so dumb down there! Will that make you happy?!"

"Fascinating? More like dangerous!" Rory replied, before Glen could cut him off. Glen rolled his eyes and grinned.

"Don't mind my cousin, he's just constantly afraid of getting broken, shattered, dashed to pieces or exploded by everything just because he's got mirror skin and that happened once before! We're working on getting over that silly, pointless phobia, aren't we cuz!"

Rory grimaced.

"You JUST pointed out that it's a valid fear because it happened once before-"

"Which means it probably won't ever happen again!" Glen replied, cutting him off again. He turned to Kai. "Kai, you haven't told her about the Catacombs?! They're the BEAST part of Monster High!"

"Theyr'e not technically part of Monster High." Rory corrected, remembering Mr. Hackington's lecture. "The Catacombs have been here longer than Monster High, longer than Scaremerica's been a country, even. The deepest, darkest most unhexplored parts may be thousands of years old, even. Mr. Hackington estimated that only one percent of the Catacombs have been hexplored and mapped. They may snake all over the country - maybe even the whole planet!"

"I HOPE we find the cavern that leads to Fanghai!" Glen burst out with hexcitment. "Wouldn't that make a great shortcut for some authentic chow mein?!"

"Having to travel all the way through the center of the Earth doesn't sound like much of a shortcut when you can travel there via mirror." Rory pointed out. So long as there was a mirror somewhere in the universe, he could travel there. But down in the Catacombs, the availability of mirrors to jump into in case of anything dangerous seemed highly unlikely. "I wish we could just stick to the parts of the Catacombs that have been hexplored and declared safe, like the SKRM track or the ferry across the lake."

Glen looked confused.

"Where would the fun be in that?!"

The Changling giggled at their banter back and forth. They seem to be good friends... I wonder If I will be able to talk to someone like that soon... Her eyes shined with wonder at Rory, "You can really travel through mirrors? That's amazing!" She grinned as they spoke of the never ending catacombs. Though she hadn't heard of a place called, Fanghai, She wondered what is was like...

Ari nodded, "That sounds lovely actually, A little Danger here and there and a nice change of pace every now and then sounds fantastic." She beamed. The elf waved to the two as she followed Kai. "They seem like such interesting people~ I hope to meet them again."

The art classroom? "Oh How Wonderful~ I'm glad That's one more classroom I'll be able to find~" She giggled again as he mentioned her books. "Yep, They're in here." She took her little white bag off her shoulder. "Looks small does it not?" Suddenly from the thin leather strings she hung off her fingers it slowly morphed into a proper Aqua Blue Back Pack (With pink stars). "I can change the appearance of things using Glamour. It's much easier to carry things this way. Heehee~" She really wanted to say, It's bigger on the inside, but saved that for later...

They approached the row of lockers where a handful of boos and ghouls were busying themselves, rifling through their respective contents, retrieving their books for the first class, stashing their lurches, hiding whatever Mister Hackington might feel most deserved a deadtention -- which could be anything when one thinks about it.

Kai looked at a slip of paper, then pointed at a locker beside where Finnegan "Rider" Wake was just shutting the door with a metallic clang. The merboo hefted his backpack over the handle of his wheelchair then turned around and spotted Kai and Arillena.

"Yo! Kai! Who's the boodacious newcomer?"

Kai smiled, knowing that 'Rider' was as friendly as he was hextreme. He stepped up and motioned a clawed hand from Finnegan to Arillena.

"Arillena, this here is Finnegan Wake..."

"But everybluddy calls me Rider." The merboo said, taking Arillena's hand and kissed it as the gentlemanster that he was... with pretty ghouls at least. "Nice to meetcha, Arillena! Kai!"

"Going to bring home the SKRM trophy, Rider?" Kai said, knuckle bumping Rider.

"Boo know it!" Rider said in response and with a screech of tires, and students diving out of the way, Rider streaked down the hall for his first class. Arillena turned to Kai who just shrugged with a playful smile.

"You get used to that sorta thing around here." Kai then nodded to the locker. "That one's yours. They're not very roomy but you can probably ask Glen to magically hexpand the inside like he's done for some of us." Kai's eyes then fell upon her book bag and he chuckled. "Though you can probably manage that all on your own."

Kai reached for her locker door to lend her a claw, when the door popped open with a clang all on it's own and a purple and pale blue streak fell out, tangled in a massive pile of clothes and books! Kai knew immediately what, er, who this was as he had popped out of his own locker enough times, when Shadeaux D. Gloom sat up, struggling to free himself from the contents of wherever it was that he had emerged.

"Well! Gotta give me credit!" Shad said as he kicked a blanket from around his feet. "At least I made it to the right school this time!"

And suddenly a down pour of empty Red Ghoul cans spilled from out of the shadows inside of the locker, burying him to the waist.

Shad sighed as he fixed his shades back over his eyes so the school lights wouldn't hurt his eyes, "But I probably coulda done without that stop in Glen's digs."