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"All fright!" Frankie, eternally cheerful smiled at her three tour-ees. "I'm Frankie Stein, and I'm happy to be your student body tourleader!"

It was handy that Nekki could float, Frankie realized. Otherwise, getting around school could be a bit of a challenge. She led the three new ghouls to the doors of the grimnasium.

"Normally, this is where Physical Deaducation takes place. Coach Igor and Coach Verizhe are tough but our championship teams can't be argued with!" Frankie opened the doors wide. "Since today is the last day of the scaremester, though, we don't have Phys. Dead. The Art Class is using the Grimnasium to display their final projects instead."

Inside of the Grim, several large art projects were set up, each with a student next to it explaining their art.

"This is Abbey Bominable. Abbey, these are the brand-boo students who are going to come to school next Scaremster!"

Abbey nodded.

"Is nice to meet. Please to enjoy ice sculpture final project. Is titled 'Annoying Fire Elemental Sculpted in Ice.'"

"Abbey is an....exactly-what-it-says-on-the-package sort of ghoul." Frankie hexplained. She walked them past other students, grimtroducing Robecca Steam and her living clock project, Catrine DeMew and her chalk pastel drawing, and Draculaura and her oil self portrait.

"And these are two of the other students on the greeting committee!" Frankie came to a stop in front of two more projects. "Layla LaMia and Kai Merha!"

Perhaps unbeknownst to Frankie and the new ghouls gathered at the door of Monster High, Umbra was already among them. She just preferred to stay silent and unseen for the time being by disguising herself as Essi's shadow. So far it all seemed to be going well.

Umbra was just about to speak up and introduce herself to the two ghouls until another ghoul came out of nowhere and bumped right into Frankie. The Alicorn ghoul put up a huge fuss about the whole thing and seemed to have quite an attitude, and not the good kind. Umbra quickly became discouraged about the whole situation and decided to stay put underneath Essi's feet until the whole thing blew over.

Watching and listening in on their conversations, Umbra learned that the two other new ghouls, despite their clear differences, each had something in common with her; they were all from different dimensions. Umbra was intrigued, maybe even a little excited. She imagined that if there was nothing else these girls could agree on, at least they had one common thread stringing them together. Maybe this new school wouldn't be so bad after all.

Umbra followed the ghouls but continued to stay as a silhouette on the ground, waiting for a less awkward time to reveal herself to the four ghouls touring the halls.

Essi fixated her gaze away from the art and noticed that Astrid was also distracted by the surroundings. Essi went to go over...Abby's art sculpture. Was it just her that saw an entrapped soul? She then felt an icy presence as a ghoul was holding on to her. These ghouls should be more careful of that considering she's wearing a portal pouch and the rick of falling into another dimension through her physical form would be unfortunate!
Ahh, the ghoul seemed to be quite shy and silent. Ess lowered her voice.
" Why yes, we both are brand boo! I'm Estrella but you may refer to me as Essi."
She stretched out her hand for a hand shake.

Previously on Monster High....

Layla smiled at Kai's obvious good pleasure. He had been so worried for the longest of time about how Ms. Moanatella would react to his art project. It was all he had talked about at lurch when he was seated with Nero and herself at the self-professed artists' table. Art was so incredibly important to Kai, he simply had to get a good grade and nod of approval from the teacher, and now he had.

"Now, Layla..." Ms. Moanatella said as she led the class over towards her own covered project, still guarded by the Anubis jackal monsters. "Would you care to tell us about your project?"

Layla cleared her throat. She was her Mother's daughter so she drew herself upright and motioned toward the velvet curtain that hid her creation, and said, "I spent quite a lot of time trying to decide what would bessst represent me with this. I decided to work from two different directions. Or..." She shrugged, considering her words carefully. "Two different time periodsss."

"How do you mean?"

Layla said, "Well I decided to go with a blend of the past and present, and represent both where I came from, to where I am now."

"And you chose sand as the mode of creation?" Asked the teacher so that all in the class would know the foundation of her project.

"Yes. I come from a desert land, and wished for the base of the project to represssent that. And to better represent myself and being a monster, I had sand shipped from as many lands in monsterdom as I could: Scarabia, Oz, even outer space. Each lands sands have a different color and quality. It took some time but what I sculpted I think represents where I am now."

"Well," Ms. Moanatella smiled. "Then let's have a look, shall we?"

Layla turned her head and smiled at the Anubis, and gave them a nod. The jackals set aside their spears and took hold of the velvet curtains and drew them aside -- revealing a large, flat sculpture of multi-colored sand where only in certain areas did it protrude from the surface in oval and sharp textures.

To many eyes in the class, it seemed just a large slate with various colors of sand spread out and mixed in. Ms. Moanatella herself stared at it curiously, but Kai's eyes twinkled. Layla suspected he had already deciphered the meaning behind her project.

Ms. Moanatella started to say, "Well... Layla. I must admit the colors are pleasing but..."

"If I might suggest Ms. Moanatella?" Layla interrupted. "If you were to back up a few sssteps across the grimnasssium?"

The teacher, and a few classmates, looked at her curiously but proceeded to do as suggested. They kept their gaze on the project while backing up, step by step. Layla watched, a smile slowly creasing the corners of her lips as the dawn of realization slowly started to come to them.

The further away they stepped, the more the colors in the sands came together and formed a picture, much like certain paintings or news prints. This was no different, and took an unseemly amount of time to pull off. It had been the sole reason why she had not been able to hang out with her beast friends for much of the past few months.

Time.

"Sand representsss time in many cultures." Layla smiled as the class was now looking at a sculpture of Layla herself, poised between her two closest bluddies, Nero and Kai. "I wanted this project to best represent my time here at Monster High, and the blesssings that came with it."

Layla felt a claw grip her shoulder and turned her head to see a smiling Kai standing at her side. Ms. Moanatella also turned to Layla and gave her a smile, "Well done, Layla. A."

Astrid spots Frankie's beckon and follows, smiling in hopes of finding something not a complete waste of her time...

...

"You again!" Astrid hisses. Literally hisses. Ugh. so far Monster High was not so good. Quite possibly the most obnoxious, disorganized, slap-happy school she has ever seen. "Ah if only the inter-dimensional portals didn't change, I would already be back at Cosmic High where all my friends are!!" Astrid hisses again before turning her heels away, sending her long hair flying into Frankie(incidentally) and Kai's(purposefully) faces, and whips past in some sort of upset.






After escaping the overwhelming moaning of mixed monsters in the Grimmnasium and finding sanctuary in the ghouls room, Astrid tears off a slice of paper towel to wipe off the stardust makeup that had dripped into her eyes from the sweat and tears. The lonely alicorn sobs as quietly as she can, hoping that no one hears a peep as she hides out in the corner of a toilet stall to wait out the day...

"HEY! Dat Bat-room is closed!" A cursedtoadian shouted at some sparkly student who dashed into the first-floor ghouls bat-room, ignoring the closed sign on the door. The massive troll heaved a weary sigh.

"AAAAAGGH, whatever! Lousy, ungrateful striplings!" He grumbled, dusting off his hands of the whole situation. "Five hours until the final bell....just five hours until the final bell."

The cursedtoadian lumbered down the hallway grumbling about messy, sloppy, annoying students and their inability to read signs as he gathered up his mop and bucket to move on to the next floor.















The softest of whispering sounds hummed near the blank, reflectionless mirrors in the ghoul's bat-room.....couldn't even be heard over Astrid's sobs.


What is that sound? It's a new sound. Haven't heard that sound before. Look closer, investigate, look closer, see more, want to see more, haven't seen enough, need to see more, what is it, what is it doing, want to know more!!!!!!!!!



But nothing happened.

It seemed liked eons of midnight silence as Essi looked upon the conversations between Astrid, Frankie, and some manster she didn't know. Oh dear, making friends was going deadfully wrong. She flickered her tail a bit, making the soft blue flame turn a dark blue. Back to serenity mode. Her face remained emotionless during the ordeal... her flame returned to light blue. Much better.
She heard Miss Stein call out to her and started to walk toward her not waiting for the other ghoul to follow. Essi would try again later on monster interaction, her goal switched back to fitting into customs here.
Miss Stein introduced the manster and departed to wherever the bell summoned her to. She gave a small wave back but her mood had clearly darkened a bit.