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

Lucas & Bash

[bubblewrapped]

At that moment, Lucas is pretty sure there is nothing better than that laugh, that smile. The curve of it. The broadness of it. The fact that...they're outside, it's mid-morning, and still somehow it makes everything seem brighter. His stomach does a flip when he sees it.

But then the words that follow are even better, and they still him. Externally, at least. Lucas' smile softens and the laughter peters out, but the buzz in his chest dials up to a roar so loud he wonders if others can feel it. It's not unpleasant, but it still makes him want to knot himself up, and its a fight to keep his fingers locked with Bash's. Lucas gives his hands a squeezes, for strength.

"I, um, same," he begins, uselessly, squinting and knocking his head to the side. Talking seriously feels a bit like scaling a cliff and Lucas has trouble finding all the footholds. "I think you're incredible," he reiterates. "You make me brave. Or, like I'm...something? Instead of nothing. Being around you is...I just want to be around you."

Oh boy, you are not doing so hot, Lucas. And this is not the greatest place to have this conversation. But where else are you going to go at this point? Lucas swallows, feet bouncing. "It'd be cool, maybe, if--um, do you want to be something more official?"

Lucas & Bash

[professionalcorpse]

"You don't think that, right?" Bash asks, lips twitching to the side and eyebrows beetling together. "That you're nothing?" It's frankly one of the more ridiculous things he's heard in the last twenty-four hours - and that's saying something, considering the particular twenty-four hours being referenced. "Cause - cause that's bullshit. You're like magnets? Or maybe like gravity or something?" He wrinkles his nose, feeling grossly inarticulate, "You know I'm bad at - at one thing all the time, but I never want to find something else when I'm talking to you?"

That's definitely not even a little bit nothing.

And then that last question - He isn't exactly sure if he's been asked a question like that before. It sets all the stuff between his ears ringing and he struggles to find an appropriate answer that isn't some sort of squeaky, inquisitive noise. (Duh isn't the right one - neither is fuck yes.)

"Well, I mean, I was sort of planning on heading off Beth's fucking intense interrogation into being attacked by ghosts by telling her I had a super cute boyfriend? So -" he shrugs and ducks his chin, cheeks heating and thoroughly ruining the illusion of easy confidence he (sort of) had going on there for a minute. "I just - it'd be real terrible if I was lyin' about it."

Lucas & Bash

[bubblewrapped]

Lucas answers Bash's questions with a look, a little pained, chewing on his bottom lip. It's a wincing shock of embarrassment - because what do you say when that's just how you feel about yourself - but it's short-lived, and, searching Bash's face, Lucas' expression relaxes back into a shy smile, one full of gratitude. He nods, because he's not sure what to say.

Until Bash answers his question. And then the smile cracks into a broad grin.

"Well, that settles it. I can't abide you lying to your family," Lucas says, remarkably measured considering he feels like mentos in a coke bottle. He clears his throat, shoulders wriggling, losing any semblance of self-control after that, "Good--great. Great. You are...my boyfriend. Cool."

Lucas & Bash

[professionalcorpse]

For a moment, Bash looks sorely tempted to press. To barge ahead, sticking his fingers further into things than is probably socially appropriate, no matter how good the intention. But then Lucas nods and, well, maybe it'll hold for a bit. Maybe he can stay right here and be okay with that, without tossing himself too far forward for once.

They've got time for that.

And, anyway, he's way too busy grinning like somebody's gone and told him he's won the lottery. Or something nicer than the lottery? (Shit, what's nicer than the lottery?) "Yeah, that's -" A laugh, all bright and incredulous sound. "That's the coolest thing anybody's called me. Like - holy shit." He doesn't want to let go of Lucas' hands, so he pulls down on them instead, swaying forward to press their lips together again. Swift, so maybe there's no time in between to take any of it back.

Lucas & Bash

[bubblewrapped]

Lucas grins against Bash's lips and it's a tick before he corrects. He manages, at least, leaning in to draw the kiss out just a little bit longer before breaking away. Then it's just a matter of snapping out of the dreamy daze it leaves him in. How do you even be a boyfriend? He thinks. It's a dumb enough thought that it does the trick. Nothing embarrasses Lucas more than his own internal monologue.

"We should probably get back with everyone," he says, newly breathless as he nods in the direction of their friends. "Face the music."

Lucas & Bash

[professionalcorpse]

Oh shit, the music. The music is going to be really close if they're all shoving themselves into the same seat on the bus, isn't it? Bash lets out a groan, thunking his forehead into the center of Lucas' chest for a long moment.

"Or -" He frees one hand in order to better raise it for more effective pointed suggestion. "We could change our identities and go off the grid. Maybe run away to a small fishing village in Alaska. Or pretend to have temporarily lost all understanding of the English language."

But he's already off and tugging the both of them in that direction, even as he continues to list alternative options with varying degrees of potential applicability to reality. Because the music can't be that bad if Lucas is willing to go and face it with him.