AFTERMATH & DEPARTURE

[goosemods]

AFTERMATH & DEPARTURE

Mr. Merrill, still half-asleep, hikes up the hill to Azurcrest to run the last middle-of-the-night headcount. Inconvenience turns to fear as he discovers that half of his students are missing, and the other are in a sleep so deep he can't rouse them.

The unresponsive students are taken to the atrium for Healer Mufferaw to tend to, and Agent Larke is already contacting the MACUSA. The government descends on the school, with Aurors and Hitwizards to lead search parties. They head out immediately to scour the woods for the missing students. Heads of House confer with one another and the agents about the emergency, and decide parents need to be informed about the situation immediately.

There's no sign of any missing students for hours. Furthermore, there's no response from the apparently comatose children in the lodge. Not until 7:14 AM, anyway. The students that weren't taken begin to stir, and within minutes Agent Larke bursts in, clearly having ran all the way there. She announces that the missing students have been found, and are being escorted to the lodge.

Agent Larke had been organizing a new search party when Ivy Templeton stumbled out of their cabin, still half-asleep. It was discovered that inside the cabins, all the missing students had mysteriously reappeared in their beds.

All of the missing students are taken to the lodge by Aurors and Hitwizards, and a thorough headcount is done. Meanwhile, emergency Healers and Healer Mufferaw do thorough checks. The MACUSA representatives interview all the students individually. Students are only in the lodge for about an hour and a half before the order comes down: evacuate students and staff. Students are to be released to their families immediately. Personal belongings will be delivered to their homes at a later date.

The school buses are familiar, but the mood of the bus ride home after summer break isn't quite the same. They don't deliver students to their doorsteps or international stops, but to a staging area in Logan, hidden from Muggle eyes, where countless fearful relatives wait to take their children home.

HOW THIS WORKS:

• All dreamers have been rescued. All rescuers have reunited with their friends.


• The seven students who took part in the Finding the Heart adventure also wake up at the same time. To their friends, it will seem like they disappeared for 15 minutes max before everyone wakes up. To the seven students, it will seem like they were gone for hours.


• Everyone will wake up after 7:14 AM. Ideally, they all wake up at the same time, but if you'd like to put it a bit later for dramatic purposes, you may.


• Your character will be picked up at a staging area in Logan by a legal guardian, or escorted by a MACUSA agent to pre-arranged international transportation. If your character has only Muggle relatives, MACUSA will transport them to and from home.


• If you are a rescuer or dreamer:
  
  • You will wake up in your own bed, unless for some reason you want your character to wake up in someone else's bed. e.g. Gabi can wake up in the Ribbonfin soph girls' cabin, or she can wake up in the Ebonhide soph boys' cabin with Bash and Wyatt, since she was with them.
  
  
  • You will keep all injuries you incurred during the event. However, you will not have any traces of ghost blood on you! Or ghost viscera of any kind.
  
  
  • You will be wearing what you had on when the event ended, i.e. your pajamas and the clothing given to you by Brother. If you gave something away to another student during the event, e.g. a jacket, that other character will be wearing it instead.
  
  
  • You will have all objects you started the event with, i.e. things in your pockets, unless you dropped them or gave away those items to an NPC. Then they're gone forever, sorry!
  
  
  • You will not have any objects you picked up during the course of the event. This includes rocks, twigs, and personal items like Diego's crucifix, Sy's captain's badge, etc. All that stuff was imaginary! Those objects still exist in the real world.


• If you are a non-participant:
  
  • You will wake up on a cot in the Atrium. Please assume you are decently dressed. You will see Healers checking on other students, and government Aurors guarding the room. Your Head of House will tell you that you were moved here for observation because you were discovered in a state of deep sleep and no one could wake you. If you ask about your other friends, your teacher will admit that they've gone missing and the MACUSA is here to find them.
  
  
  • Mere minutes after you've woken up, you will all hear from the Aurors that the other students have been found in their cabins.
  
  
  • You have no memory of your roommates leaving the cabin, or being moved to the Atrium. You slept straight through the night. You did not have any dreams.

» MORNING: You wake up. You're in, well, a bed. It may or may not be your own, and the people you were with when you were in the other world may be with you.

» AFTERMATH: As soon as the staff realize that all the missing students have been found, everyone is promptly escorted to the lodge. Campus is crawling with MACUSA presence, and hitwizards and Aurors alike lead the students to the lodge. Everyone is looked over by emergency healers, and give quick statements to the authorities.

» BUSES: Understandably, everyone's families are impatient to get their children back. Students are hurried onto buses to be taken to a relay point outside of the anti-apparition zone, where their families will be to take them home.

» OOC - QUESTIONS, COMMENTS & CONCERNS

Comments

MORNING

[goosemods]

Senior Coppertools' Cabin

[hisshiss]

Robin awakes suddenly, violently, and he definitely doesn't jump when his cell phone clatters to the ground. Because he's a stone cold badass shut your shit ass mouth.

"The fuck is—you gotta be—" he mutters, still foggy with asleep, and rubs his eyes with the heels of his hands. His oily as fuck hands. "Dude. Fuckin' shit dude, man, dudes. The fuck?"

As you can tell, Robin is very coherent this morning.

CHICKABRO HQ

[bubblewrapped]

It's just like passing through another door, another teleportation, except this time it happens when Lucas opens his eyes. He stares at the ceiling of his cabin. Sees sunlight creeping through the hem of his privacy curtain. Hears the birds outside.

Clearly, he's dead.

Lucas rolls over carefully. He's not sure why precisely because you probably don't need to exercise care when you're dead, but anyway, it's what he does. He pushes aside his privacy curtain and finds not the ruined remains of his cabin but, just, his fucking cabin, and Essie on the couch.

"I'm not dead," he says to the room, to himself, to Essie, as he climbs out of bed. "You're not dead, either!"

Smooch Squad! (Junior Ebonboys' Cabin)

[sunsoutgunsout]

Casey returns to the waking world by stretching—or trying to stretch, as he's surrounded on all sides by things. Squishy things. Fabric things. Hair things.

He spits blue hair out of of his mouth with a loud BLEH. Hey! He knows that hair! "Stamps, did we, like–" He wiggles a little against Cameron's chest. He was about to say get trashed or some shit but instead he just says, "Oh. 'Sup." Yeah, they definitely got trashed last night. And he had the weirdest fuckin' dream.

Junior Copperjerks' Cabin

[browbeats]

The first thought that flashes through Rosy's mind when she opens her eyes is,  Where's Sy?

Once she's confirmed that she is still, in fact, attached to her twin, she allows herself to run down the list of others she needed to account for. Reid, Roxie, Xavier, then if possible she needed to check in with Ferdie on the journals, see if any more names had been checked off Quinn's list, then back to the woods, back to the endless night.

But when she swats at the privacy curtain to whatever bed they were smashed into, Rosy notices something new: sun.

"Holy shit," she says, awed, almost happy. God, she hopes this is a good thing. She really, really hopes this doesn't mean anyone was left out there. "Holy shit."

Ebonhide sophboys + Sam

[theniceboy]

Solomon rolls over and buries his face in Sam's hair. Sam's hair smells water logged. It takes a moment for his mind to wake up enough to consider that burying his face in sam's hair shouldn't be right because that means they're sharing a bed. He jerks his head up to stare down at her, full of blurry wakefulness. "We're not dead," he says with childlike wonder actual children probably shouldn't have.

Jr Azurboys + Vee (And Any Other Sleep Buddies)

[dumb_ass]

The last thing Oscar remembers is being in the stables, holding Vee closely to him. He doesn't remember falling asleep, moving anywhere, nothing. He remembers being at the stables and now he can tell almost immediately he is somewhere far more comfortable. As he stirs, he pulls Vee closer to him - for some reason he isn't surprised that she is still there even if his thoughts are hazy.

"Vee." He mumbles, pulling her closer and keeping his eyes closed for just a bit longer. This felt so sweet, he didn't want to open his eyes and ruin it, fearing they'd start all over or they were still stuck in that other world. When he dared a peek through his closed eyelids, he saw the sun shining through the blinds - and that was a damn good indication this was over. Their impeccably clean room was a welcome site after all the debris and decay of that Other World.

"Oh." He says, pressing his forehead into the back of Vee's neck, kissing it after and then sitting up a little. "We're safe, Vee. Everything looks to be back to normal."

AFTERMATH

[goosemods]

CHOO CHOO BABYTRAIN (SEARCH PARTY & ALL PERMUTATIONS, RESCUEES)

[bubblewrapped]

"D'you think they're--" Lucas starts to say to Essie, wondering about the friends they haven't reconnected with, yet. But he loses his train of thought when a particularly gruff-looking auror walks right past them. He gawks, obviously awed and a little bit intimidated, inching a bit closer to his much smaller, much braver companion. Gosh, the lodge sure is crowded.

Once he has to crane his neck to follow the auror's path, his attention snaps away and he scans the sea of people in search of a particular set of faces. "They've got to be okay, right?"

Ferdie & Open

[ferdie]

Ferdie still has a headache. It's not as bad as it was in the mines, but there's a lingering echo of it, somewhere in the back of his head. He doesn't bother telling the emergency healers that. It's not like they can do a lot. And right now it's only that, and the small hole in his sweater sleeve that he caught on probably a rock in the mines. His fingers keep circling that, breaking the threads farther apart. He's also staring at the window a lot, because Ferdie never really imagined there'd be sun again.

Which is stupid. The rays of light through the window are so warm now, thinking the other way seems crazy. Surely, there was not a time when everything was dark. Maybe this never happened. He rubs at his temples, and the throbbing pain there is reassuring. And then Ferdie makes himself as quietly busy as he can, ushering people away from Aurors if they look like they're about to annoy them; Prefect stuff like that. He's a Prefect again. He's glad for it, though. He can't quite stop yet. That seems like the most frightening idea of all.

Ravi & Diego

[knightly]

Ravi walks past all the students and teachers and MACUSA agents stuffed into the Atrium, feeling... strange. Removed, perhaps. His friends are safe. Some of them are bruised and dirt-smudged, teary and exhausted-looking. He sees the younger students—technically juniors now, as they've graduated sophomore year—and how they watch each other with narrowed, protective eyes, as though they trust no one except each other.

Ravi's been told what happened. All he remembers is waking up in the woods, with Diego. Then waking up in his bed again, with Diego, and his roommates nearby. All of them looking like they've been walking through the forest for days.

It doesn't feel at all like something that happened to him.

He'd given his statement to the MACUSA, which hadn't taken long. Then Mr. Hightower had offered him tea. Ravi had asked for two mugs, and something stronger. Then he went looking for someone to share it with.

"Diego." Ravi holds a cup of coffee out to him, with cream and sugar. "I thought I lost you," he says, lightly.

Roxie & Reece

[uponawire]

Waking up in her own bed, all on her own once more, had been the sort of shock that set her heart right back to racing. (She wasn't ready to do it again. Not by herself, not after all of that.) And while running into the vast majority of her friends again had definitely helped, Roxie still hasn't quite managed to settle down quite as well as she'd really prefer.

Her boots are poorly tied and her father's t-shirt, even when knotted at her waist, hangs low at the back and slides off of one shoulder, making her look smaller than she already is. Mostly, she feels like she's waiting for something - fingers absentmindedly unraveling a particularly stubborn knot in her hair and tracking the unfamiliar faces that pace the room - coiled tight and ready to spring into motion.

Laurel, Open

[kingofthefairies]

Laurel is fidgety, vaguely sick. In a way, all of this feels to her like a very weird, very bad high.

She's been clinging to Ivy like... well, ivy... but spends a quiet moment after her healer exam just sort of sitting, staring out at her fellow students, all those agents and staff members. The energy here is unreal; she's never felt anything like it before. Fear and relief?

She stands a little shakily, wide-eyed and bedraggled, to find and rejoin her twin.

Kurt & Open

[puphart]

It's been hard for Kurt to wrap his mind around the news that a third of the school just up and disappeared into the forest in the middle of the night. His friends were placed in probably mortal danger. They've been assured that everyone's alright and yes, of course he believes the adults, but he knows he'd feel better if he could see them? Maybe if he could wave 'hi'? Or hug them?

He scans the Atrium for a familiar face. He's trying really hard not to worry. Really. But if he could find Chloe, or Ferdie, or Ursula, or Ennis, or Kenzie right now? He thinks he'd feel a LOT better.

Okay, maybe, right now, before he finds the friends that he's SURE are hale and hearty, he needs to, um, catch a certain loose niffler before it makes it into one of the Healers' bags. Kurt takes off after his familiar, squeezing between parties always with an apologetic "S-sorry!", but in the end, with little control over whom he may or may not run.

Morales-Trans

[wilhelmeana]

Only the fact that these were literal government Aurors stopped Mina from storming out of the lodge and running all the way up Azurcrest hill in her bunny slippers. Which isn't to say that Mina didn't try, stridently and angrily, to boss a man twice her age and height into letting her out of the Atrium so she could find her sister.

At least the lodge fills up fast. Too fast, really, as students stream into the room, lead by uniformed Aurors. Mina is too short to see over most of their heads, so she makes sure her voice can compensate. "ESSIE!" Mina yells, shoving past others as she makes a circuit around the Atrium. "Essie! Diego? Estella!"

Chris & Rosy, possibly featuring Sy and Team Punch ghosts idk

[bambae]

Getting hustled to the lodge by obnoxiously concerned adults is overbearing to the degree of being annoying. Getting checked over for injuries and giving an actual statement feels tedious. Chris has scratches on his face that aren't serious enough to need an actual solution for. The statement he gives to explain his scratches and disappearing act is a long, convoluted account of a ghost army attempting to invade the school that he and Robin fought singlehandedly.

In the midst of the chaos, he sees Rosy, getting checked over for injuries and goes to her side. He's still wearing his Boston bruins pajama pants but he ditched his hoody for a plain grey tshirt because it's June and he can do that. "Sup girl. How you doing?" He asks, giving her a very discrete head nod.

Nia (Open)

[heyitsnia]

The mystical reassurance that everything will be okay is great and all, but Nia's building walls in her head the moment she wakes up. Shoving this new, highly personal information about six other students into the back of her mind and bricking it over on the walk to the lodge, a storm cloud hanging over her. She hopes they will do her the same courtesy.

When MACUSA sits her down on a cot in the atrium and ask for a statement, though, it all rushes out - the dream, the woods, the mine, the moonstone; and then, unable to stop, the fear of the school closing, and her scholarship and her father and, oh god, her mother - until it feels like there's nothing left of her but skin. Thick skin, at least. But, otherwise empty.

She should get up. She should be useful. But she just sits on that cot when the MACUSA reps leave her and Nia lets her head slump into her forearms, instead.

Sylla & Open

[sylla]

She feels every bruise and every pained limb as she walks through the Atrium, gingerly brushing her hair away from her black eye. The soft skin around it is tender to the touch, and she can't help but run her fingers over it. She walks away from one of the MACUSA agents, biting the inside of her lip and striding as confidently as she can through the pain. Borgins do not care for the questions of Aurors. There are many things they don't understand. But Sylla doesn't understand much of what has happened either. She tells them of the entity that she fought, of the forest and getting separated from the other girls, but the decision to stay hushed on the mirror and the scissors weighs on her mind as she finds a corner of the room, a space on the wall.

With a sigh, she slumps against it and sits with her legs crossed, tucking her boots under her and wrapping her coat around her like a blanket. She looks out at the other students, resting her head against the cool stone wall. Something solid and real seems to help, and she wraps her arms around her bare legs.

It's all a lot of fuss from strangers. She only wants her family to fuss. She only wants to go home.

Sy & Clem

[threatens]

Sy's not moving more than ten feet away from his sister, not when her voice goes all taut when she calls out his name, not when she keeps looking up at him every few seconds like she expects he might disappear. Again. Because Sy can't stop himself from leaving her, even though he always promised he wouldn't.

He doesn't feel like fighting Rosy on this, but being metaphorically chained to her side means he can't really wander around searching for friends. Which wouldn't have been a long search anyway. There's Rosy, there's Reid, and there's Roxie too. Everyone except one. He doesn't remember anyone striking her name from last night's list, a list that doesn't exist anymore.

The cat on Sy's shoulder meows. "What is it?" Sy reaches up to scratch Killer behind the ears. She's starting to get heavy. "Don't worry, girl. There's no way Decourt's still in the forest. She owes me a fuckin' rematch."

The Lost & Found Box (Ivy, Leo, Quinn)

[quinning]

It's been a... very long day. Or night? Regardless of which measurement of time she's supposed to use, Quinn feels like she's been awake for a week, at least. In some ways she has—she'd barely slept the week before she spent last night being pushed and pulled by supernatural entities in The Fucking Unknown. She slides down the Atrium wall until she lands on the cot pushed against it and leans her head and shoulders back.

Ty doesn't need a bodyguard or a babysitter, she reminds herself for the twentieth time since they left Coppertale. He's off giving his statement to the Aurors and she tried to distract herself by watching the healers work. In two months she'd be at school again, learning to do what they do. Precisely what they do. She should be over there, observing, asking questions. Getting tips. But she feels removed from that reality somehow—and can probably blame that on how each of her bones seems to ache from exhaustion.

Quinn's eyes linger on Ty, again, across the large room. He is capable of taking care of himself. He doesn't need her to hover. She sighs. It's not hovering that she wants to do; she wants to wrap her arms around his waist and not let go. She wants him to bypass Oregon completely and get off the bus with her instead, and then sleep for a goddamn week. She takes her glasses off and sets them on her knee, closes her eyes.

Hazel & Open

[lilwitchhazel]

Hostile and tired, Hazel didn't want to talk to agents about what happened and she certainly doesn't want tell her family when she sees them, or really even think about the events of the evening. She just wants to... go home, she guesses? A part of her does, but another part of her is anxious about leaving her friends - she doesn't trust the world with them right now. Leaving would have sucked with or without forest shit shenanigans, but this parting of ways is probably the worst she's ever had.

Hazel has been scowling since they'd woken up, and she doesn't look like she's going to be quitting any time soon. After giving her statement she sits in one of the chairs in the atrium in a sleeveless hoodie, the front pocket sagging with the weight of Joe Montana as she looks around, making mental note of who she sees (and who she doesn't. Just in case.).

BUSES

[goosemods]

Wilde & Saira

[destructobot]

Wilde still felt like he was in a dream, even after waking up in the cabin, fiercely hugging his friends. Being poked at by the emergency healers. Giving a testimony that felt like recounting the events in a book, not anything that had actually happened to him. He has a vague sense that he might be in shock, but he can't be sure. What's that even like? The feeling is: relieved, but numb. Time seems to be passing so slowly and so quickly all at once, so that by the time agents begin rounding everyone up for the buses, it truly seems like he's only just arrived at the lodge.

It's okay, though.

He hasn't had time to find Saira yet, and he knows she'll be on this bus. Absolutely. Safe, sharp, well-rested. He waits at the end of the line to board, trying to sort out his emotions, if he wants to say anything to her, if anything he'd say makes sense, but his thoughts keep drifting and he just ends up smoothing Sid's little head with a finger instead until the hedgehog curls away from him, deeper into the pocket of his pajama bottoms.

Then Wilde climbs up the steps and into the bus. He makes his way down the aisle with exhausted but single-minded determination until he finds Saira. He spends a weird moment holding up the line just looking at her, overwhelmed, then takes a seat without saying anything. It feels like the first time he's been off his feet in forever, and he hadn't realized exactly how worried he was that he'd never see her again.

Lucas & Bash

[bubblewrapped]

Lucas stares at the buses as people wait to board, seeing easily over the heads of most of his friends. Everyone wants to sit in the same seat on the bus. That seems like a pretty significant safety hazard, but so is throwing yourself on the back of a crazed ghost dad, so Lucas has resolved to shut up about it for at least forty-eight hours, or until the image of that pickaxe swinging down on him stops playing over and over in his head.

There are other thoughts, though, that Lucas doesn't feel like keeping to himself. He lays a hand lightly on Bash's shoulder. "Got a minute?" He asks, gesturing with a nod of his head off to the side, away from their friends.

OOC - Questions, comments, concerns!

[goosemods]

GOOD JOB GUYS, WE MADE IT!

Re: OOC - Questions, comments, concerns!

[duelled]

YAY!

Ivy for volunteer A?