Welcome to Gaia! ::

((Please be warned that despite the hilariously unfortunate name of the school, this ORP setting is dark, and may actually borderline on gruesome sometimes if we ever get to anything like that. It's very ~book 7~ and not at all ~book 1~. So if you're expecting a light-hearted, funny RP, this isn't it, sorry!))

Perched atop one side of a high mountain, and surrounded by a pitch black lake, the school was a castle made of stone; puncturing the sky with its many pointed turrets and towers. For some, it was home. For some, a prison. But for most, it was just a stepping stone on the path to greatness.

And for all, it was a haven, heavily protected against the dark forces that had begun to rise again. There was no savior. No magical boy who held the power of love as his shield. The only thing that protected the wizarding students of this school was the school itself, and even then, the walls were getting thinner. And admittance standards were getting lower.

The headmaster did not believe in condemning a child for their parent's choices.

But for now, the days went by as they normally did. Classes filled with lessons on charms, potions, and wandwork droned on, children listened and learned, and each day, they became stronger. Allegiances were forged. Friendships formed bonds to last a lifetime. It was a typical school experience, for both the innocent, and the guilty. Whether or not this would change what plans laid in store for the future, or not, was yet to be seen. Only one thing was certain.

Serpentarius was filled to overflowing with freshly nurtured spies.

A thunderous beat that sounded like herds of cattle came down the steps from the boys dormitory, until the cause of the disturbance slammed down on the floor, both boots shuddering the floorboards, and he rose up to his full height, and immediately headed for the door.

He didn't stop. He didn't look at the one person sitting in the common room at that moment. But he passed by her, and when he did, his hand slipped under the book she was reading, and slapped it away.

"Nerd." He grumbled under his breath, still walking away.

He had one foot out the portrait when he heard it, which was the only thing that stopped him. The book had successfully smacked against his head, with one corner even - but somehow, that physical assault had not deterred him from leaving for a moment. Instead, it was the word, that word, that had his large boot sinking back behind the portrait, and slowly closing it in front of him.

He just stopped, and stared at the back of the portrait for a while.

When he turned, there wasn't a great deal of anger displaying in his expression. He just looked annoyed. Something about the way he held back indicated that he'd already pep-talked himself into calming down before he turned around, so that when he finally faced her, and bent his large body down all the way to her eye level, he didn't look like he wanted to kill her.

But it was there. Right in his dark, dull green eyes.

"Say it again." Three words, but every one of them sounded like a threat.

Thick, meaty fingers wrapped around that lithe little neck; it was so thin that his fingers almost touched. He rose, and with her in his hold, so did she - sliding across until they met with a wall, halting their progress. And there, he pushed, holding that little breakable body an inch from the ground.

"One more time."

Control. The voice that sounded suspiciously like his fathers whispered in his mind. Remember your control. You're not going to fail me again. If I get called in to clean up another one of your messes, yours is the only mess that will remain.

Yes, father.

His hold lowered until her feet touched the ground, but they never let go of that pretty little neck, so delicate that it was practically asking to be broken.

His other hand, the one that wasn't holding her pinned by the neck to the wall, rose to place a single digit on her lips. His eyes widened, just slightly. And he hushed her.

"Shhhh."

If she didn't say it, he didn't have to kill her. And they could go back to class, and ignore each other for the rest of their lives. That was the outcome he wanted, right now. The outcome he needed. So he hushed her, because it was for the best, for both of them.

His robes had slid off the hand that rose, just enough to show a black, inky mark on the skin of his forearm. Something writhed there, as if it was alive. But it was too obscured to view it as anything more than a patch of darkness.

So the b***h was crazy. It was a good look on her. But it wouldn't get her very far. Still, crazy was better than nerd, and he had to re-adjust his labels before he loosened his grip, and rubbed his thumb along the edge of the indent on her skin that his hold had made. It felt like if he just pushed a little more, he would have gone through. But that would be messy, and unclean, and he didn't have a single knife on him to make things better. He itched for a knife right now. Just a little tear, right where the indent was. It would feel like scratching an itch.

"I wasn't trying to make you hush, you psycho." Robert growled. His voice was more of a vibration than a sound. "I was trying to quit this s**t. So we could - "

And then it hit.

"Who the hell needs me?" He suddenly looked exasperated. Was he dealing with yet another family that had hired his father? Was this going to just keep happening with every goddamn person he met? How was he going to survive going to this school if this many people knew exactly what buttons to push to turn Robert from a homicidal maniac, into their homicidal maniac?

It was becoming a little unfair.

Rattlerattlerattle.

The sound came from the open portrait hole, cutting through the tense air of the Serpentarius common room.

Poe's heels swayed across the Insanitor's ribcage as it rounded the corner and drifted through the entryway, her skinny legs swinging side to side, almost as though in giddy excitement. The first year looked positively ecstatic atop the gaunt, floating figure. The Serpentarius colors of her scarf, wrapped snugly around the demoralized creature's skinny neck, stood out in stark contrast to its flowing white robes.

“ROBERT!” She chimed in a sing-song voice, all excitement and energy that was quite the opposite of her brother's towering aura of doom and gloom and also a little bit of I'm Going To Murder Your Face Off.

She flapped the ends of her scarf like a pair of reigns, as though to say 'giddy up', and the Insanitor glided smoothly forward. It would take a moment for her to drift close enough for an observer to realize the way her legs swung was somehow.. unnatural. That their movement came only from the swaying movement of the creature upon whose shoulders she rode. As she drifted to a halt, it would become apparent that the ankles peeking out from beneath her dark robes, even clad in striped socks, were impossibly skinny. The kind of thinness that only came from years of disuse and muscle atrophy.

“You made a friend!”

Robert's little sister beamed down at him, all smiles and adoration. After all, it wasn't his fault she couldn't walk on her own. That she hadn't been able to since the one and only time they'd ever fought as children.

At least that's what they both had told themselves all those years, long enough for at least Poe to fully believe it.

“Say hello, Abner!” Poe yanked hard on the scarf-reigns, and the creature's head swiveled towards Mimsy. It let out a sigh that smelled peculiarly of bubblegum and toaster strudels, along with a rattling of jawbone. The words were incomprehensible to living beings, but in Insanitor-speak translated roughly to: I used to be a successful mortgage broker, you know.

Thin fingers had found their way to her neck again, gently trailing over the places his hands had been, transferred smudges of ink covering much of the evidence that there had been hands there at all.

"Are you sure?" she asked, brow raised. "Your judgment is impressively certain for someone that, might I remind you, you hardly know." Her smile shifted to amusement and intrigue as she wondered what he meant by that. Surely he was not clever enough to have any depth.

Head tilted, she gave 'Abner' and 'Poezie' a little wave, an equal greeting for each, practiced and timed to the millisecond.

"Hello. You were correct - he has made a friend. He's just a little ashamed..." She lowered her voice to a whisper. "Because I'm a 'nerd', he says."

She fell silent just long enough to examine the girl who had ridden an Insanitor through the door. He--Robert, she noted--reacted as if this was a fairly typical occurrence. Interesting, considering her choice to use what appeared to be her assigned scarf as reins instead of actual reins as reins.

All of the questions that bubbled up within her mind were not questions to be asked of someone she'd just met, so she kept her mouth shut (just this once), hoping that they might provide her with some clarity just by interacting.

Are you sure?

It disturbed him, how difficult it suddenly was to answer that question. It enraged him. It boiled his blood. It made him want to answer her by carrying her bridal style all the way up to the Leo towers, and throwing her off of it.

And Poe wasn't helping. In fact, Robert was starting to feel like he was stuck between a rock and a hard place, but he couldn't decide which was which, and he was going to get flattened either way. He snarled, just slightly, when Mimsy called herself his friend. He wanted to clarify that she was no longer a nerd, in his eyes. She was just delusional and psychotic. But he didn't - because even Poe knew that to him, that was a step up. Which meant it was a compliment.

So he stuck with nerd.

But his hands clenched into fists when Poe started to tease him about - that -

"Poe." His voice was a whispered hiss that came out through clenched teeth. He couldn't get mad at her - he didn't have the capacity. Not after -

"Please."

What was he even begging for, anymore? Maybe he wanted the Insanitor to kill him, after all.