gooseberryhigh | AFTERMATH & DEPARTURE

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

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

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."

Despite being put into a forced sleep, Vee feels exhausted. She remembers vividly the rock, the cold surrounding them, the lake. She remembers that feeling creeping along her spine that hasn't seemed to have left despite being awake. Knowing someone came into her room, while she slept, and did all that? It's a lot. So it's really no surprise that when she feels arms around her, feels true warmth for the first time in what seems like weeks, that she doesn't want to move. Doesn't even want to acknowledge it. Her dream had seemed so real, she could still remember everything with startling clarity. What if this wasn't real either? What if nothing about Jeremy and Oz finding her was?

What if she's still out there?

Oz's voice mumbling against her ear does wonders to banish the fear starting to creep back in, and she inches herself as close to him as she can get when he pulls her close. "No," she mumbles, in case him saying her name is him trying to wake her up again. Vee can feel the sun, feel it on her skin and her hair and everywhere, and that cold starts to disappear. Oz's presence is solid and real and she just wants to stay right here. They can stay in this moment, right?

A small smile tugs at her lips as she feels that kiss to her neck and his forehead against her. Cracking open one eye, she looks at him. "Are you sure? My dream felt pretty normal too," she says softly.

He can feel her fear when she nuzzles up closer to him. He had the same thoughts, the same feelings - that they would wake up in another unknown location, another place they thought they knew but didn't. That looked the same but wasn't. Oscar smoothed her hair with one hand, letting his fingers trace her cheek down to her jaw. Listening to her protests, Oscar makes sure to pull her closer again, holding her tightly. Letting her go felt wrong - felt like if he let go she would disappear again.

Oscar kisses her again, her cheeks down to her lips and then smiles. "It's real, I promise." He didn't know what the dream felt like, but he knew what this reality felt like and it was different somehow than the other place. "There was nothing in your dream that felt... off, now that you think about it? What did you dream about, anyway?"

Though he wanted to get up and make sure all their friends were alright, he was content for the moment to sit here and talk to her. Make it all seem normal, give her a sense of comfort and stability before they had to face the reality of what really went down. Oz felt lucky in a lot of senses. His group had (mostly) skated past any real damage or further trauma aside from the obvious our-loved-ones-were-kidnapped thing, so though he still felt a bit fucked up from the whole thing, he moreso felt the immense relief that it was over.

"We'll stay here a minute longer, but we should make sure everyone's okay after. Tell me about your dream."

Vee allows herself a smile and a soft sigh as his fingers trace along her face gently. It's a nice feeling, a normal feeling. And she really needs normal right now. She wants to go find all their friends. She wants to set eyes on Clem and Sylla and Nia so she knows they're safe for herself, but she can't bring herself to move just yet. It's nice just to lay here, encircled in Oz's arms, feeling his warmth against her. The kisses don't hurt either, if she's being honest. And after being woken up from literal paradise in that bizarre reality, Vee wants a little nice. Just for a few minutes.

"I mean, yeah? I guess now that I'm looking back on it, the fact that doors kept appearing in the sky or on the beach randomly was weird," she confessed. "Especially when those took me into other people's dreams." Nestling against Oz, she lets the memories of her dream come back for a minute and sighs. It was a really good dream. And Vee knows she was lucky to just be sleeping instead of fighting ghosts to rescue people. If one could call slowly freezing and potentially starving while being left in dangerous places lucky.

Nuzzling into Oz, she sighs. "It was a beach party," she says with a smile. "And I guess I should have thought it was weirder that I was swimming with actual mermaids, while being one myself." A sheepish smile now. "But like the type you see in Disney movies, not what mermaids are like in real life," she adds. Sea shell bra and everything. Looking at him, she looks uncharacteristically bashful. "And you were there...with me." She's smiling a little, but obviously seems shy as she emphasizes the "with" part.

AFTERMATH & DEPARTURE

Jr Azurboys + Vee (And Any Other Sleep Buddies)

Jr Azurboys + Vee (And Any Other Sleep Buddies)

Jr Azurboys + Vee (And Any Other Sleep Buddies)

Re: Jr Azurboys + Vee (And Any Other Sleep Buddies)