Welcome to Gaia! ::

A finger poked Brian in the side. Misha snorted but it quickly died into a soft laugh. "Teenagers may cave pretty fast to peer pressure but they aren't quite the Borg or French Revoluntionaries," she pointed out. "If they're being led by someone, that someone has to have powerful charisma and be a lot more than meets the eye."

She shot one more quick spray into her hand and rubbed the mosquito repellant thoroughly into the skin of her throat and upper chest. Then she leaned around Brian to return the precious item back to Beth. "Thanks, hon. You are a life-saver."

As she returned to her proper seat, Misha let her hand rub a quick, comforting circle low over Brian's back. Then she straightened to pick up her bowl and brought it back to her lap. She looked sideways at Mal, lifting an eyebrow. "But a ringleader and a pack of teenagers and way too many missing people..." She stirred her food with her spoon idly. "And clothing that was torn but not shredded and windows broken from the inside. The chances of a naked hippy commune goes down with every discovery.

Tom had finally joined the rest of the group, though he wasn’t very hungry at that point. He wished he was, the stew looked delicious. Mostly the conversation seemed random and it didn’t seem like any of them had found out much. Just mostly theorizing and meeting each other a bit more. He almost felt anxious that they should be out doing something rather than sitting here.

There was some girl that was speaking about magic and missing persons. And looked asked, “anyone know what type of magic? I mean perhaps there may only be one kind, but I haven’t been paying attention to it much myself. Do you know if it was something like black magic?” Though if there was, it probably would be black magic considering the raccoon chosen.



More talk of witches it seemed as he heard another woman speak, though she had said this quite a bit before. “Teenagers being led astray by things? Not a surprise. Though I do wonder what would be going on in the tea shop. Wouldn’t mind checking it out myself.”



Though there seemed to be some crystal thing at the tea shop and it seemed it was only goth teenagers who had been affected by the witches? They would be into occult stuff. He thought to himself as he stared at the stew.



He looked over at… Misha was it? “I’d be willing to help you look for people if you want. Might as well get a list going. It’s not natural for so many people to go missing in such a short period of time.” He had worn long sleeves so he wasn’t worried about bugs at least. But if people were missing, then they should at least gather a list in case they found them or… well other things.



He wondered what all of the tracks looked like that they had found. No doubt a chosen of Artemis would be better at identifying them than himself, but they should be on the lookout for possible chosen and if they knew what form they might be in it would probably be a bit easier to search. Hopefully none were in the delightful form of ‘mosquito’.



“Well, maybe they offered them something? Or at least used something to lure them in. Could have been money or a promise of something. But that’s something to be looked into, whether it involves witches or not.” He would have said something like ‘hopefully it’s not something too bad’ but being chosen and what they were dealing with already, he didn’t feel quite that optimistic.



“Then that certainly is a darn smart raccoon if it is just a regular raccoon. He did a little jig dance and everything. And I’m not a vet or anything, but he certainly isn’t showing any of the classic symptoms of rabies, but to be fair, I was afraid of him possibly hurting someone at first too. But not to worry, it takes a while to show signs in humans and I know where you can go and get treated for it.” And he would probably insist that if anyone was bitten by any of the animals here to get treatment for it as soon as possible. Rabies was no laughing matter.



It seemed though that the chosen had found something out about the wildlife here, or perhaps they had noticed something and inquired about it. The group currently sitting around the campfire hadn’t noticed anything strange other than… Arthur was it? Arthur had been turned into a raccoon. Which might mean there was something else out there they would have to deal with besides some suspicious witches.



“Yeah, if one dared someone to jump off a pier for $10 into freezing water, the rest of them would probably just do it for fun.” Tom said, chuckling a bit. “But of course, it should still be looked into. I just hope we might be able to get something out of them.” Hopefully they weren’t under the influence of something to the point where they could give information to the chosen.



Some guy seemed to be quite doubtful that there actually could be witches. Well, there seemed to be a few skeptical people here and if everyone here was an ordinary human Tom wouldn’t believe any of it either. But now he was mostly letting stuff slide on the ‘believable’ scale because if everything was true about what happened in Greek legends, he would believe that people could be turned into animals or there could be witches who did… stuff.



Though listening to all of this conversation made him uneasy though and he probably wasn’t the only one. They were now all back together where they could easily be attacked just like the last group. Weren’t you supposed to learn from history or something?

Tom got a slight nod. "But how are they-- we'll use gender neutral for now, even if we think it's the woman-- keeping them that way? Presumably each teenager wants something different. So either they're being promised all different things and somehow they're not questioning what the others are getting, or this charismatic leader has made them all want the same thing." And either way, that was pretty frightening. Or it could be.

Mal made a face at the bowl of his stew, what was left in it, anyway. "Bartender said a month, maybe two-ish." He made a so-so gesture with one hand. "So.. what, say five to eight weeks, maybe."

Rob absently slipped his arm around Sid as she curled up against him. It was comforting to her, sure, but also to him. "Yeah, well, we found a bar, and the bartender told us about the shops in town. The one that stood out was a tea shop that also sold crystals, and from the way he talked it sounded full of all sorts of new-agey bullshit. We didn't get the chance to check it out -- we decided to get back here." Setting the bowl of stew in his lap, he finished his meal, still wishing for a beer to wash it down. "That's really creepy about the camp."

Then Asher zeroed in on him. "No, they didn't do anything magical -- they just mowed us down as they left the bar." He snorted derisively. "If you ask me, they didn't look like they could make a fly disappear." Though things were starting to add up, the more information everyone threw into the conversation. Witchy kids, strange new charismatic woman, talking raccoon, mixed animal and human footprints, the other evidence at the camp site…

Yeah. This smelled like a big fat swamp rat.

Sylvia had been poking at her stew for a while. She hadn’t been involved in its making, but she’d wondered what all they’d found to put in it. Something about the idea of eating food left behind by the other Chosen was making her a little uneasy for some reason. Still, she was hungry enough, and she eventually gave up her curiosity and reservations for a bite. It wasn’t bad.

Most of the conversation had started while she’d been mulling over her stew. She was fascinated to hear about the Chosen-turned-raccoon, though she understood the skepticism expressed by others. She watched Arthur for a while, wondering vaguely how long he had been this way, and whether or not he would keep his wits about him or if the transformation might eventually turn him entirely into a wild animal. She certainly hoped he was in no danger of the latter.

The culmination of all of the info each team had gathered certainly seemed interesting. It was probably good that they’d had enough people to split up and each investigate different pieces of the puzzle – perhaps they would figure things out much sooner, and hopefully not end up in a situation similar to Arthur… It certainly seemed there was something bizarre going on, but it would take more looking into to be sure of what was happening and that it wasn’t all some weird coincidence – though that would be a lot of coincidence.

She tilted her head a bit as she tuned into the conversation about the teenagers and their potential reason, or reasons, for the sudden shift in lifestyle. She agreed that such a shift would take some doing, but she wasn’t sure there needed to be such lengths as individual bribery or coercion of each teen. There were plenty of ways to rope teens in without needing to know about their individual desires. “I think you’re forgetting about the ‘cool’ factor that kids care about so much. And what's more, the general desire to rebel – and what better way to rebel than getting into witchcraft, really?”

If some woman swooped in with her s**t together and an enticing, darker air, it really wouldn’t take much to turn them all into ‘witches’. She imagined that keeping them under her spell, as it were, would require little else than results; and with all that they’d seen in their own lives and the evidence they were finding here, she had a feeling they were getting plenty of validation for their efforts.


[ OOC: I love you all but a lot of people have been commenting on the teens so I am kinda just gonna leave this open to whoever wants to key in on her comments... ; v;' <3 ]

“They might be being controlled at this point now, so whether they want to or not they are having to act a certain way.” Tom replied to Mal. Though whether that was worse than doing something of their own free will, it was a major problem. “Though I do wonder what attracted them in the first place. That would be the place to start I think.” He said the second part mostly to himself; all they could do was speculate for right now. They would have to go and try to get more information before they had anything concrete to go off of.

He gave a small smile to Beth. “That’s all right, maybe we can learn later what exactly the magic is supposed to do.” He hoped that it wasn’t random what the magic was though. He wasn’t exactly sure how it was supposed to work after all. They didn’t seem to be using the same type of magic that appeared in Harry Potter at least.

He glanced over at Sylvia. “That’s another possibility. Depends on the kids I think. If they’re the outsiders, which goth kids in a small town like this might be, it might not take much to entice them in some way that would get them attention in some way. And if being goth was their way to ‘rebel’ already, then they might have been more attracted to the witchcraft stuff.” He hadn’t exactly been a rebellious teenager himself in his ‘youth’ but there had been plenty of kids in his class who fit that mold.

Tom sent a smile to Misha. “I’m Tom, chosen by Apollo for some strange reason.” He replied. He would really have to make a list of who was who and who they were chosen by. It would make things a lot easier at least. “I think we’ll know a bit more what to look for this time perhaps.”

Overall though, Tom was getting antsy sitting here and doing nothing. They had so little information to go on and he was uneasy just sitting here. Sure they were near a building now and not in the middle of the forest like the other group had been, but that didn’t mean they would be more likely to spot danger. “If we’re going to stay here for a while, I think we should take some night shifts for anything of note or if we see anything dangerous happen.”

Asher pulled a little face at Rob, understanding -- he'd met a few teen 'wiccans' in his day, and mostly they acted holier-than-thou and talked about how their religion was persecuted and misunderstood, something that always made him roll his eyes.

Sure kids. Now play nice with your little spells.

"What's this all mean, though? Some new chick, a bunch of teens calling themselves witches, people getting turned into animals?" He shook his head, eyes dragged off Rob to frown at everyone else. "If this is for real, are there just a s**t ton of witches who can do this kind of stuff? Or is this someone we should all be worried about?"

Well then, I think we're all at the point where we can say that something has happened to the teenagers and that something happened to the chosen here whether they were captured or all turned into animals." He replied. He hadn't been in the group that learned about the teenagers, he wouldn't question what other people had been telling him, considering he had been shot down pretty well with his theorizing.

"I still think we need to do something though. At this point I'd be willing to go up and check out some more stuff, though I know some other people are tired. Or do a night watch, or go out into the woods a bit." He wasn't annoyed at those who were or anything like that. Just he himself wanted to get up and do something other than sitting around here talking about the same stuff over and over again and making little to no progress.

He knew he should be more patient as a doctor, but at least you had a goal in mind or did something to help patients and right now they were mostly just talking and not really doing anything else. He had expected that they would have gone deeper into the woods with Olivia's group but all they did was turn around.

At this point he felt like he should go by himself he was so antsy to get something done though he wouldn't. It was too dangerous to do so. He wasn't sure what else they would get out of each other just sitting here since they all pretty much agreed on everything.