Welcome to Gaia! ::

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!

"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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.