{ The School Office } [Re-Open] PAGE 36: THE CALLING

[x_Nata_x]

At first, Nuk was surprised to see Tristan half-stalk into the main office, but the look of bewilderment quickly turned to a scowl to match the wolf demon's as the other student rounded on him, pointing a very accusing finger at him. "WHAT?! Why in HELL'S NAME would I put up YOUR picture?!" he half-growled back. Immediately he was on his feet, taking a few large steps to close the gap between them. Thrusting his chest out so it was practically touching Tristans, he got right in his face, snarling. "AND IF I EVER HUMPED A HOG IT WAS YOUR MOTHER LAST NIGHT, YOU FART-SMELLING, BUTT-LICKING --"

But that's as far as he got. Because it seemed Belladonna had a bone to pick with him too, and she was not about to let the wolf demon get in her way. Taking half a step back, Nuk blinked at the shorter witch, obviously startled by her outburst -- hey, he didn't think bubble-butt was so bad! It was just a nickname! It just meant he liked you! Ok no, that was a lie, but it wasn't that bad, was it? Blinking again, he stayed completely silent as she explained her skirt to him, having not said a single word even as she turned her attention to Tristan, and finally to Arel, still floored.

... whoa.

.......... and wait... that wasn't Arel...

The skinwalker was just about to round on the gnome as well when a shadow suddenly spread across the floor towards them, taking up much of the space inside the office, and almost all eyes turned towards it. Mostly with fear. That... looked startlingly like Professor Helma Shox's shadow. For once in his short, teenaged life, Nuk went completely rigid, barely daring to breath as the shadow accosted Belladonna.

"Other bathroom. Right. C'mon Bu-- Belladonna. Trist..."

Sliding a hand slowly (oh so slowly. More slowly than Nuk had ever moved in his life) around Belladonna's shoulders, the other reaching to fist the front of Tristan's shirt, he edged backward towards the door, not daring to turn his back on it.

He'd heard stories. Stories too horrible to even mention.  

[AyeAvast]

For a moment the nodding form of the plush coat stalled the witch's next movements, but when the shadow snuck up on her and addressed her, she totally froze. Was this the shadow her older sisters had spoken of with the deepest of fear? It was just a shadow... Wasn't it?

Other bathroom? As in, there were multiple bathrooms in the basement? What was going-- Now Nuk was protecting her with an arm on her shoulder and woah, he looked really scared! Apparently this WAS the scary shadow Hemlock and Delphinium had spoken in hushed whispers about. Maybe it was best to avoid it if she could. Turning back to link her arm with Tristan (Nuk started this whole physical connection chain, so she might as well finish it), she followed the skin walker out of the office and toward the basement.

Apparently, there were other students to save!  

[Zoobey]

Arel wasn't here the following day, nor the day after. Needless to say Hellma enjoyed two whole days of peace and quiet, as gnomes who were not under secretarial influences actually brewed amazing apple cider - and did not take sips of it either.

Come Frightday there was one haggard ice demon sans scarf and cape sitting on his desk, knitting. He had successfully summoned enough awkward silence to make the one straggling student, about to complain about the horrible UNJUST education system, simply slink out of the office, tail between their legs.

The pile of student applications and incident report were untouched, as always, and the two spiders lurking around his desk were more than happy to claim it as their new home.  

[Lucifer Force]

"Excuse me?"

A rather sullen looking young woman wandered through the threshold, ignoring the flaming warhorse that stood vigilant near a dead potted plant. Blinking, she pushed some of the unruly black mane of hers (hehe, mane, considering the horse! Err, never mind.) with her fingers, Kasumi set foot into what she thought was the school office. Good! Perhaps she could get some directions. And some pants. Halloweentown was much colder than she expected. Could she even feel cold? She spotted a great blue something behind the desk, knitting.

Oh, a kind older woman to assist me! she thought, a smile gracing her features. She was extremely happy to see someone else who was friendly, and look, knitting a pair of socks for someone. How sweet!

"Ma'am? I seem to be a bit lost. Could you point me to the ghost dormitories, please?" She gave a bow to the woman behind the desk. And she had such nice hair! Very charming fashion sense too.  

[WE ARE HALLOWEEN]

Oh for Jack's sake! He forgot to loop the knit on the twenty-third row! Or was it make the row first and then loop, it was hard to tell with all that ruckus seriously, it was as if he was working with the door open.

The 'secretary' looked up briefly , half a face and antlers finally appearing beyond a rather fantastic pile of thread and needles. The student looked back at him. He was briefly aware that there were words in her sentence, something like 'Ma'am', and then 'please'. All that registered to him was that some annoying first year student was asking for help.

With a halfhearted look that might have conveyed something like I am busy leave me alone if his desk wasn't occupied by two feet of wool, he blindly reached with one hand for the buzzer. Two attempts and a buzz later, a gnome seemingly appeared out of nowhere.

A gnome that was not only duct-taped around the mouth but also bound around the arms. It seemed like someone had a grudge with them. The barely-a-foot-tall creature tried its best to convey a 'follow me' look as it heaved and shoved with its head, attempting with very little success to open the office door outwards. Arel unfortunately, was entirely absorbed in his personal tasks, having unravelled most of the thread again to start anew.  

[Lucifer Force]

Kasumi bent down to see the gnome in all his glory... was he tied up? Interesting. Looking back at the secretary, she was very absorbed in her knitting. Secretaries were a busy bunch as far as the ghost was concerned, dealing with students such as herself and then the work piled on her by the headmistress. Kasumi gave the secretary another bow.

"Thank you kindly, ma'am. May your knitting be cooperative." The ghost then turned to follow the gnome out to the ghost dormitories. She didn't have much with her to be honest (just the clothes on her back!) but she could improvise! Kasumi carried a map of the school grounds and followed the gnome while checking areas off her mental list.  

[demon_pachabel]

He was knitting. Certainly it wasn't the strangest task that Arel had ever been put to, but given a certain someone probably had a completely different mental image at the time, Cricket just snickered in the doorway. Literally. She hadn't even bothered opening the door! She had, however, made a point of coming down to visit the office.

Why?

Because she'd heard someone had gotten the honor of being taped to the ceiling of a certain bathroom (that even she had been subjected to attempts to clean, once upon a time. Oh her youth....it sort of made her shudder).

"I see you made it out alive again." she stated blandly, keeping her voice neutral as though to prevent there from being any sort of speculationg that she actually cared and had just come down to make fun of the ice demon.  

[Zoobey]

For just one tiny smidgen of a milisecond, he faltered in mid-loop. The impressive now nearly spanning five-feet scarf hiccuped. Arel knew that voice from anywhere.

"Mom?!" He said, rather incredulously, standing up with a rather cautionary expression, looking like a little kid caught with their hand in the pumpkin jar. Thankfully it was only Cricket.

Caught somewhere between suddenly uninterested and vaguely annoyed, he sat down again, slamming his "project" against his desk, nearly squishing the two spiders who were in the middle of an intense spider Texas Hang 'Em game. "Oh of course the whole faculty knows, thank you Ms. Obvious." He slumped against his slightly-oversized chair, legs drooping down. "Unless you're paying me in Pumpkin Grog, I'm not interested in listening."

Despite his tone of voice, which ranged from moderately not interested to really not interested, there was something casual about it that possibly suggested to the student standing by (or were they just a dead corpse? It was hard to tell sometimes) that he perhaps knew the school nurse in another lifetime.  

[demon_pachabel]

Cricket cackled at the initial response her 'checking in' garnered from the ice demon, the sound enough to make Shehk prickle from across campus. (She was probably wondering WTF it had been now). Oh, how hilarious the half-pint was.

While one of her centipedes investigated the spider-duo on the desk, Cricket seemed to give the pouting secretary the same sort of evaluation. Only hers was less of a debate on if she should have ate Arel or not. As hilarious as it would have been.

"I guess I should have been more surprised you're still in one piece; you never would have let me try to patch you up if you were missing a piece." OH WAIT, HE ALREADY WAS. And something in her expression just said that, the centipede ultimately losing interest in the spiders. Oh good, there would be no lunch on Arel's desk.

Well, unless it was his.

Really, there was a certain 'teasing' in her tone that was lacked on the student body (who simply got 'bitchy' from her), but ultimately, she just shrugged it off. He wasn't a student after all.. then again, did Cricket actually care enough about anybody to come and check in on them like that? Even an armless student would have to find a way to bring their arms to her to be put back on.

"I'll save the grog for some other occasion."

Again there was a slight chuckle, as though she'd just considered a silence 'like when you grow another inch in height' to tack onto the end of the sentence, but beyond that, she'd gone on her way back out the door (and passing through some poor student that probably hadn't expected to get a face-full of school nurse. Didn't help she had to come back for a glowing centipede that got stuck in them. Eek!)  

[Valandal]

Giving a glare to the gnomes, Valentino was dragged to the Princess Corner. He wasn't used to items lying to him, they were usually so honest, so when the shed's tools had complained to him, he'd believed them, never suspecting a trap. He would have to interrogate all of his equipment back at the lab; they could be spies, giving false advise and reporting his every action to the authorities.

Valentino could already see his inquisition's scale start to grow. The advice his pen gave him was also suspect, the homework answers that his books whispered to him at night, he suspected they were all lies. At least the straws were still on his side, they hadn't been useful, just sitting in his pocket. They had no inclination of the world outside his pocket.

Already lost in thought, Valentino started planning the instruments of torture that he would use to make the spies confess. He had always been partial to fire, but he wanted to reform, not incinerate everyone. Valentino weighed the pros and cons of various ideas before he concluded that the best course of action was to bury them all alive for a fortnight. After they were exhumed, everyone would be friends again, or else.

Waiting for punishment wasn't as bad as before. By himself, Valentino was enjoying the princess corner. The office was the one place where students were the minority. He smiled at the passing gnomes, wondering what their insurance was like, they were injured so often.  

[lizbot]

The Corner's magic activated, causing a large tiara to appear on the zombie's head. A banner unfurled overhead, reading, "Valentino is a sparkling princess of love and hope!" Small pink puffs of smoke and glitter appeared all around the student, dissipating only to reveal a hoarde of indestructible stuffed animals. Slowly they rise and move as one, surrounding and then leaping at the zombie. "PRINCESSS HUGS!!" They cry adorably, giggling and squealing with joy.

The FEAR in the corner's atmosphere begins to fade, leaving anyone caught in it faint and nauseous. It will be three weeks before Valentino is able to attempt Brek's shed again. Avoiding the groundskeeper's wrath would be wise in the future, as a second misstep may cause eternal banishment from the shed.  

[demon_pachabel]

A few days after her first class, when she was finally going over her stack of papers, Cricket had come across a most... interesting one. However, like all things, she'd treated it most seriously, pulling a post-it from within her desk (Why she had them, nobody knew. Probably to scribble illegibly on to feel like a REAL doctor sometimes..), wrote a few things on it in red pen, paused, fixed a few things on the SHEET in red pen...

and then later left it on Arel's desk.

 

[Zoobey]

A few days later after Cricket had 'deposited' the form, a mollified secretary found the sheet, having managed to go through a rather hefty stack of application forms - all folded neatly into paper airplanes, when the yellow stick-it note hidden within one of the stacks caught his eyes.

Well it was more like an annoyed secretary, until he peeled off the stick-it note and actually read the contents. With killer intent, he turned around, and was not surprised to see a stack of gnomes hiding in the corner, all high-fiving each other.

This evening, the school cafeteria sported a new addition: Roasted Gnome Ears A La Carte.  

[demon_pachabel]

Well someone had ticked Cricket off, given how the front office had been flooded with insects, the desk buried in a mixture of ants, spiders, and a few angry centipedes.

Oh dear.  

[Lilwolfpard]

What did he do this time, he could not even think of his last prank off the top of his head. Orange shoes clinked on the floor as he approached a all too familiar door. Said door was made to be large and scary... but once you see it enough it loses its intimidation factor. Blue tail flicked and swayed, clutching a crumpled note that he found below his door upon waking. "Come to the front office." It said, no reason no explanation... just a summons. Part of him wondered if it was serious...or hell maybe someone was pranking HIM.

Remi learned one thing though, and that was never ignore a summons to the front office. He would know from experience. The creaaaaaaaak of the door, meant to also be scary... he wondered if the groundskeeper purposefully left the think creaky, caused the fur on his tail to slightly bristle. Oh...that stupid princess corner. Half lidded eyes darted to the all too familiar corner of PAIN, he never wanted to do to that thing...

So he stood there, looking like a idiot staring around. "...Um." He waved the 'official' note around.