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"I know you will. You're good at it!" Even if they were ultimately defenseless for the time being, Thackery did feel protected, nestled close to Ash, lovingly tucked under his arm. It made him feel like the happiest lapdog in all of Hades.

"I don't like it either. It scares the oogieboogies out of me." He twisted just slightly, still staying close to the taller student, hoping to somehow garner some new information on the cloaked figure. It seemed to just be...waiting. His stomach churned. What if it was waiting for enough students to show up, and then do something really terrible to them? "I want to know what he...it? is doing here, but I'm scared. I think it might be bad. But maybe there are enough of us here to fight it away if we have to. Especially with you here - you're so tall and strong you could maybe just smash him!" He willed himself to believe that. Riley was brave, standing so close.

Since he was beginning to scare himself and wasn't getting any better an idea of who the stranger was, he just watched at the crowd continued to grow, hoping that one of the newcomers might have an idea. The large number of new (or unfamiliar, at least) students walking in their direction made him realize that he needed to get out more. A few familiar faces turned up, but he didn't know any of the names to properly put to them. He even thought he might have seen a flash of bright, golden kitsune tail; after rubbing his eyes and failing to find the same image when he checked again, he decided he had to be imagining it.

"Do you see anyone you know who might know who they are? Maybe it's someone from the trip?" It would make sense, but the theory also fell a bit short. Surely they would all be doing something more drastic than standing around and demanding answers if a bad guy from their adventure showed up. In their safe, comfortable territory, no less.

"Hey Lark!" Roch called. "Where's Ben?" He hadn't spoken to Xiu, but he seemed quite happy to see the female reaper--or maybe he was happy at the idea of seeing her familiar.

But there'd been this little sound that had bothered him, he thought, his eyes searching the crowd. What... he couldn't place it exactly but--

"Bad news, yeah." It was the easiest way to put it to Xander. Maybe later he'd explain it to the other zomb - Sweet Sally, he felt . . . weird all of a sudden. The world was spinning, and his head felt funny, and his innards suddenly hated him.

Was it the lunch kicking in? Wait, he hadn't eaten the school lunch in a couple of days . . . Actually, the most Mort recalled was eating some chips earlier, which by now had been digested and out of his stomach. The zombie nonetheless dry-hacked several times, covering his mouth as he shook with the sudden urges. Some drool went past his stitched lips, embarrassingly enough, mixed with a little stomach acid. Unjackly sour taste.

He was thankful he didn't have to eat, or otherwise this would have been very bad timing. Imagine, a Serious Moment of Plot, and his response was to suddenly puke? "S-Sorry," Mort mumbled as he wiped his mouth with a sleeve. "D-D-Dunno what . . ." Oh Jack, he felt dizzy. The zombie slowly slid to the ground in a sitting position beside Freya, moaning softly.

He rubbed his temples and took a deep breath to try and ward the nausea off. From his level, he spotted familiar black feet and, gingerly, he lifted his gaze to see his ol' bro Herryk still at it with the eyephone.

He wanted to wave him over, really, but right now the mysterious sickness was making him not want to move at all.

Both of them were now down thanks to Chuppi and, from the way she stared down at both of them with a look of anger and fear in her eyes, she made it very clear that she was the reason behind their sickness. Her small body was trembling as she wiped away the tears that had gathered at the corner of her eye, and opening her mouth she mumbled something akin to an apology...before darting off.

She'd heard a voice over the sound of Mort and Freya's sickness, and she looked back and forth before she spotted it. against the wall happened to be a certain crooner she liked, and Chuppi didn't hesitate to throw herself against him in a hug. "Roch!"

Bowling Ball Buddy?

Tomoko stood up on her tip toes to see if she could tell who was talking to her, before crouching own to look between everybody's legs, her ears flicking between positions before she finally tucked her legs up against her chest and...rolled...between people's legs. Literally rolled, before bonking into Vaith in her rolling attempts.

"I'm here!" she said popping up to dust herself off a bit.. which required checking all of her tails.

Israfel let out a chirp of pride in return for the compliment. "Thank you. I can do dive and spins now. Still working on catching this from the water though. I tend to go to low and the drag of the water send me well-" he rubbed the back of his head, ear wings folding back in embarrassment. "Swimming." Not that it was a bad thing. He was an okay swimmer, he just liked dry clothes.

"But that is alright. We will train later. I've yet to spar in the sky!" He was excited at the idea. Looking over to where the mystery person in red was, the siren thought that everyone was a bit silly. Walking over to the ~*~*~MYSTERIOUS STRANGER~*~*~ the siren grinned. "There are a lot of incidents here. like the one where we got sent to Christmas. Or when we got stuck on an island. Oh, or even the time there was a cider shortage. You need to be specific. But if you are talking about the recent one where we saw the things that the school doesn't want us talking about and some of the students ran around in red, you should probably go speak to Miss Hellma, or Riley." He pointed over to her. "Riley knows ALLLLL the things. She's school president you know. Are you a new student?"

Innocent, clueless siren was innocent and clueless.

"Roch!" Lark stomped a little closer to her friend, giving him a little nudge with her fist against his shoulder. "Ahh, I kept 'im desummoned. He gets too chatty 'n big groups like this," she sent a sour look in Freya's direction. "'n I'd much rather him not talk ta certain folk." Huffy, huffy broad.

Smiling, Lark turned back to Roch.

"So wha's goin' on? Flat t'the boards, yeah? Lots goin' on? I was hopin' t' beat th'livin' daylights outta someone, but looks like there ain't nothin' like that goin' on?"

She sounded so disappointed, but brightened when she caught sight of a small green ghoul approach Roch. Lark cleared her throat and offered a small wave to the ghoul with the quills.



A familiar sound (well, familiar enough) caught Herryk's ear and he looked up from his phone to catch sight of Freya, Mort and Chuppi standing relatively close to one another. Tucking the phone into his belt (he really needed a nice man-purse like the one that Mort sported on their man-date) Herryk knelt at Freya's side in alarm.

"What is going on, hmm?" His gaze alternated between Mort and Freya before he glanced after his little bug. What had happened between the three of them that now had his best brofriend and his ghoulfriend looking like they'd just eaten something terrible?