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Should I stay or should I go~

For Micky.

There was so much to be sad about at Barren Pines, and Evie had most certainly given her dues. At first, the deaths seemed to be a foreign, distant affair, but then the bacterial meningitis had claimed Viridiana, the girl who stole Evie's spotlight when she could get the chance, and even though Evie still could not find it in her heart to entirely love the girl, she was shaken by the notion that her small-time rival was irrevocably gone. And then Effie was gone, taken by the mysterious disease that Evie didn't even fully understand, and Evie began to get scared. She had been in Effie's room. She had breathed the same air. There were times that Evie was scared that she had somehow contracted the bacteria herself, and was next on the list to die.

But none of that mattered now. There was only the music, and only Evie with her headphones plugged in and the world entirely tuned out. She only allowed herself to listen to major chords, happy and uplifting C scales with accompanying E scales for some variety. She didn't have to think about the real world, where people below her were already beginning to scream about something or other going on downstairs, or how it seemed the slightest bit warmer inside her uniform jacket. No, she was off in a world where everyone sang to their loves and everyone was beautiful and gracious and no one spread rumors and no one cried or died of strange diseases and no one went up in smoke, just like that. Evie was so enraptured with this perfect picture that she didn't even realize that there were tears rolling down her tanned cheeks as she hummed the perfect triads to the current.

Evie tilted her head, eyes closed as she rocked back and forth in her chair, half-lulled to sleep by the lullaby herself as she sang along. This was perfect, she realized. Simple. Music never died. Her voice, once joined with the greats that serenaded her from her tiny little earbuds, would never die, either. Bacterial meningitis couldn't touch the beauty of music.

But there was a slight pressure at the edges of her consciousness, something so horridly out of tune that it started her out of her semi-reverie, irate and ready to storm out into the hall to tell those pesky kids to keep it down. After all, it was already so late at night, and Evie had the decency not to sing at full volume, so there was absolutely no reason that other people should be so loud. In fact, she stood and crossed to her door to tell them so, turning the knob with a single fluid movement.

Evie did not expect her cross expression to meet the orange light of flames at the other end of the hall.

With a shriek, she all but stumbled back into her room, the door ceremoniously slamming inches from her face. Why weren't there alarms going up? Why weren't there people trying to escape? It occurred to her then that this must have been the racket she'd heard before, and maybe she just hadn't heard the alarm through her music. It was unlikely, because Evie recognized the shrill upper A-note from many a fire drill, but it was always possible. A more pressing matter was at hand, however, and when she reopened her door to assess the situation, she was kissed by an errant wave of heat that caused her hair to float back freely in forest green waves.

If the fire was coming from the end of the hall, then the stairs had to be burning already. It was coming up from the first floor, then, Evie thought, stepping away from the door. She couldn't go down from there, but what were her other options? She turned, glancing at her window as her heart became to palpitate and her thoughts became less clear. She'd never even tried to open it before: what if it was too far of a drop? The girl did her best to steady her breathing as she glanced out of the window at the long drop down. It was only the second floor, granted, but people could break their legs on less, and suddenly Evie found herself terrified.

If this was her world, there would be a strong male lead to help her out, to encourage her through her tears and her whimpers and to jimmy free the reluctant window hinge. But this was reality, and it was amazing what one could do in the heat of the moment, the window opening with a rush of cool night air from outside after a moment's resistance. There were things that Evie should collect, she knew. There were clothes and books and computers and all sorts of things. There was not, however, the time to consider such things, and so the most she reached for was her scarf to wrap around her neck, her mp3 player still playing in her pocket as she leaned out the window, looking down with a gulp. Maybe if she dropped herself gently, it wouldn't hurt, if she did things nice and slow--

There were screams from outside, and Evie let out a terrified sob as she clambered over the edge, her heart racing and her fingers sweaty as she shimmied onto the small window-ledge, sliding her torso down as far as she possibly could to ease the fall. But alas, what Evie had in musical talent she rather lacked in upper body strength, and her slippery fingers lost purchase of the windowsil, causing her to topple down. She'd heard somewhere that most leg injuries were from locking one's knees, and so she did her best to fall limply onto the cold, hard ground, the grass hardly cushioning her fall as she rolled, screaming the whole way.

It hurt. It hurt much more than Evie thought it would, and the tears that now fell from her face were from dizzying pain. She could only watch in horror as the building continued to burn, flames pouring out of Effie's old room next to hers. She managed to pull herself away from the building itself, but something felt wrong where she landed, and she wanted nothing more than to cry and for it to be sunlight, when this would all be a bad dream. Burying her head into her scarf, she wept and allowed the music, once so soothing and now so trite, to carry her off to blissful unconsciousness. She would deal with this later, when she knew it was just a horrible dream. Right now it was all too real.

Rolling for thyPope/Mason Everheart, cause I don't know if she found some one to roll for her and I don't know when she'll get on.

((ROLLING FOR VERA WILL DO SOMETHING LATER MAYBE AFTER I WAKE UP AND IT'S NOT 12:30 AM))

The yelling is what made it click in Zeke's head. Oh, yeah. Sue's shouting is what woke him up, after all.

"Thanks for shouting, then! You actually woke me up, heh... took me a few seconds to realize it, I guess." Ding-dong, Zeke.

"Fire! Everyone wake up, there's a fire!" Zeke shouted, though his shout was nowhere near as loud as Sue's. He continued shouting as he followed the purple-haired boy, until he heard Sue hiss at Piper's presence.

"Oh, hi Piper!" Zeke waved. "Actually, there's a fire. We should get out of here..." He trailed off as Sue barked (or should it be meow? Huh.) an order. Zeke could take short orders like that, so he walked around and took Piper's other arm. It was like a twisted, panicked version of The Wizard of Oz as they stumbled towards the stairs. Luckily, the ceiling hadn't collapsed, but it didn't look like it would wait for them much longer.

"We've got to go quickly!" cried Zeke as his eyes widened at the sight. Without apologizing (I'm not sure he even realized that he was invading one of those strange 'personal bubble' thingamajigs), Zeke wrapped an arm around Piper's waist and hoisted her up before bounding down the stairs.

She was still smiling pleasantly, even as Sue looped his arm in hers and began to drag her towards the stairs. Maybe Piper had missed the fire 101 class in elementary, or maybe she'd spent the whole time staring brainlessly out a window, but until she actually saw a person come barreling down the hallways on fire she probably wouldn't even realize she was in immediate danger. After all, she certainly wasn't connecting smoke and unbearable heat to fire yet.

"A fire? I don't see a fire," she said with raised brows, trying to crane her head to look behind them as her other arm was grabbed up by Zeke and the pair began to escort her down the staircase. Where was the fire? She couldn't see! She was still trying to see it, in fact, when she was suddenly grabbed by her middle and hoisted up. "Oph," was all she said, grunted in surprise, before she was greeted with a slightly bouncy view of the world level with Zeke's shoulder.

"Oh, this is fun!" was all she said, her head turning between Zeke and Sue as they descended and all thoughts of a fire completely lost. "It's getting really hot though, can we maybe go outside?" She'd have to speak with the janitors the next time she saw them and complain about this god awful heat, that was for sure. The heating system was going crazy.

It was coming up on 1am. Kirin only noticed because it was his self-appointed bedtime, otherwise it would have passed as unnoticed as all the other hours he spent on his computer every night.

Kirin was not a hacker. This was important, because if he was, he would be having a much easier time of things. It hadn't taken long for Kirin to work out that there were certain things he couldn't write in his letters from to his grandfather. His hand would cramp up, his throat would tighten, and if he tried to continue he would wake up to find ten minutes to half an hour had passed while he was unconscious. Deciding to take the issue online, Kirin found he suffered from the exact same issue trying to type it into an email or a forum.

If there was anything Kirin knew, it was programming. Somehow, someone had stuck this program into his brain, convincing it to shut down when he tried to convey certain facts about the school. Luckily, Kirin also knew even the best programming could be worked around... eventually.

So while Kirin couldn't pass on any information yet, he spent all his nights researching everything he could online, and trying to find ways to at least record the 'forbidden' information, if not pass it on. He thought he almost had a way around it. So far, the choking and cramping sensations were more tolerable when inputted into a certain coding program. Most of what was written was unintelligible to the average person. Somewhere buried in the middle was what would appear if the program ever ran:

This information will never be passed to anyone. As long as I remain alive. If you are reading this, I am dead, and I need someone to know why...

The first line had been the easiest. The following ones, and the information Kirin had gathered about the school, were much harder. Kirin couldn't add to that section for any longer than a minute, having to quickly switch back to the coding that would send the message to a list of contacts if Kirin didn't open the file once every 24 hours.

Of course, Kirin didn't know if it would work. He had no way of testing it. Perhaps, when he considered the tweaking of code complete, he would create a dummy file containing harmless information and not open the file to see if that sent.

In any case, it was almost 1am. The clack-clackity-clack of typing slowed. Kirin hit CTRL-S and quickly scanned the file to see if anything jumped out at him before hitting his bed for the night. While scrolling, Kirin's nose crinkled. Was someone burning something in the kitchen again?

"What stupid a*****e is up at this hour?" he muttered, failing to appreciate the irony of that statement. Pushing away from his desk, Kirin stomped over to the door. About to open it, he paused. Heat was radiating from the metal handle. He looked down to the floor - and jumped back when he saw smoke curling in under the door. "Holy ********!" Kirin said under his breath.

Running to the window, he tried to pull it open. It wasn't budging. Kirin pressed his face against the glass, peering out. A red glow was lighting up the building, mostly down at the ground floor, but a few other windows on the first floor were lit by ********!" A scream this time as Kirin pounded on the window. Even if the fire wasn't in the halls already, there was no getting out via the bottom floor. It looked like the window was Kirin's only way out, and why wasn't the stupid ******** opening? Some kind of auto-lock feature? Kirin wouldn't put it past the ******** running this place.

Smoke covered the bottom foot or so of the room now, rapidly increasing in volume. No, no, no, NO! Kirin had too much to do. He was getting out of this school somehow, so suffocating in his bedroom was not an ******** it, Kirin's mind blanked out in hopeless rage. Grabbing the back of his chair, he swung it at the window.

"You've got to put your weight behind it, Kiri, or all you'll do is hurt yourself," a remembered voice floated through his mind.

The window shattered under the impact.

About to crawl out, Kirin's gaze passed over his desk, then swung back to the still-open laptop. Swearing, he slammed the lid shut. He pulled the cord out of the wall without bothering to turn anything off. The laptop went into the padded bag next to his desk. The sole picture frame on the desk - a redhaired woman and her young, smiling boy - followed the laptop.

Essentials safely removed, Kirin crawled onto the windowsill, bag slung over one shoulder. He kicked at several sharp shards sticking up from the frame and then began maneuvering himself through backwards. A hiss escaped as a shard sliced along his lower leg. He did his best to ignore it, and finally he was out, dangling from the windowsill, pain blooming in one hand as tiny glass fragments dug in.

Kirin let go.

Thankfully one floor wasn't a bad drop. Kirin felt bad about the students in the higher floors. Not bad enough to have stayed and risked his own life, of course. Kirin legged it away from the burning building, heading around to the entrance side to see if anyone else made it out.