Evil's Return (redux) Chapter 1: First Day Jitters

[The Artist Formerly Known as Hawk]

Don had been sitting peacefully for a while now, enjoying the lengthy "break" the job afforded him, when suddenly the door was opened, and a face he recognised walked in. He had recieved Abduls case file several days ago, along with several other new Protectors and he'd made certain to commit as much as he could to memory.

Abdul-Rahim, 28, Warden, formerly with the Guardians, magical illusionist and shield conjurer, general support magics and handgun marksman, was just some of the general info that Don began to recant in his mind as the Iraqi man wordlessly busied himself with a coffee of his own. He was slightly surprised when he then sat down across from him.

"So I guess introductions are in order."

Damn, guess I've been made already. Ah well, needed to introduce myself to these guys at some point.

"I suppose they are, Mr Rahim, what gave me away?" There was no one else around, it was safe enough to speak openly, and Don was nothing if not direct. "Colonel Don Wight", he said as he shook the others hand, "I was meaning to come and speak to you later on today as I made my rounds. Did you find the "package" in your desk?"

[Bard The 5th LW]

'So he does know my name', Abdul thought. "Ah yes, the 'package', I'm not quite sure what I would do without my gun." This guy may have liked euphemisms, But Abdul decided to be blunt about what it was.
"I figured one of you S.E.C.A or Society guys would fill me in sooner or later, I guess my little coffee excursion sped things up a bit." Abdul chuckled a little. "I'm saw you inspecting some of the wards outside, I assume everything is set up accordingly."
"Anyways, I'm sure I will be introduced to the other protectors after the school day, what I find to be more important at the moment is identity of The Chosen, I was kind of rushed here, so her name is unknown to me, but I assume she will get to my classroom eventually." He paused to take a drink of coffee. "So what is the unlucky girl's name?"

[Arhra]

Raine Lancaster, demon hunter and Society Magus, sat just back of the center of the room. It was a less than optimal position for firing from and so there'd be less competition for it from those of an undercover disposition, despite the fact it still gave an excellent view of all the entrances into the room. Including the air vents, of course.

She was here as Raine Castile, Perfectly Normal Student. There was a risk that others might recognise the Lancaster name, as it was a family that had contributed greatly to the Society over the years. She was in deep cover, with even the other Society members purposefully unaware of her presence.

The back-up essentially. An extra precaution, just in case all the other precautions failed.

Like the original intended school burning down, for example.

Eyes wandering over the filled classroom, she wondered just how much of the class was Protectors. She was certain if she cared to snoop, she'd find a few desks containing some interesting surprises.

Her own equipment was well disguised. Her casting sigils were part of a bracelet. Not the one she was wearing - that one was designed to look similar but have absolutely no magical significance. The real one was in her pocket. She carried a small number of purity seals as well, in a compartment inside her shoes.

Knives, it had been decided, would be a little too difficult to explain.

Raine watched with interest as a sarcastic young man stood up and introduced himself. She immediately pegged Lynn as a Society infiltrator. Such a good actor and an air about him...

Also she knew his sister!

Her turn came. "Hi everybody." she said happily. "My name's Raine Castile, age 17." Lie. "I'm a transfer student too, but because of a move, not a fire." Lie. "I like sports and listening to music. I hope to make a lot of friends and have a fun year with you all."

[rapter200]

After filling in his class on what they would be doing this year he made them play some ice breaker games, asking questions such as what was your most embarrassing moment, etc. This didn’t go over so well because no one wanted to say anything, typical of high school students. Maybe it was time to spice things up a little. “Do any of you believe in Ghosts, Demons, and the supernatural.” Isaac asked his class. No one dared to raise their hands, instead choosing to give each other weird looks as if to say “what the hell, is this guy insane.”

“I can tell by those blank looks that you have never given this much thought. But don’t worry, you’re here to learn about these things not to contemplate their existence. In fact don’t worry about demons all together, I am sure they have bigger fish to fry then yourselves.” With that Isaac sat down on his chair and powered up his laptop. “On that note since it is the first day, and I don’t feel like grading any papers over the weekend, the next few days will be very easy. If you know a lot of music, especially bands from the 80’s then today will be an easy day. I will play the class a song, whoever is the first to guess it will get a point, the winner gets to start the year with 20 extra credit points. Tomorrow and the days until the weekend we will be watching a movie that I will decide upon tonight.

[mauve]

(OOC: Yay for phones with interwebs.)

Matt sat crossed-legged on the windowsill. Hiding in a bathroom wasn't exactly his original plan for keeping an eye on the Mother, but things hadn't gone entirely as as he had hoped thus far.

First, he hadn't considered how large the school would be, both architecturally and population-wise. In retrospect, the plan "enter school, find Mother of Hell, kill demons, gloroius victory" may have been a tad oversimplified.

He leaned back against the frosted glass of the window, stretching a leg out over the basin of the sink. His plan was to just drop into a random classroom and pretend he was supposed to be there, hopefully picking out some SECA agents who could in turn lead him to the Mother.

He ended up almost running headfirst into a security agent, tripping over a backpack, losing his way, freaking out when the first bell rang, and ducking into the bathroom because it was the only thing he could think of doing.

"Stupid." he grunted, kicking the soap dispenser.Well, at least he could plan out what to do next without interruption. Or classwork.

[wight24]

Damn i have made four periods hate me. John thought as he sat down and cleaned his pistols. I sure as hell hope the mother of hell wasn't in one of them. When is lunch? He asked Himself.

[Toastburner B]

((OOC: Wight, please check the discussion thread.))

From most point of views, it would be hard to see.

For almost any person, it was nearly impossible to notice.

Over the course of a few hours…since before school started until now.

If this had been happening at Taylorsville High School…pre-fire, of course, it would have been a slightly less interesting sight to see. These self-same birds would of found it impossible to fly within a hundred yards of the building, let alone land of the roof.

Which, of course, meant that these weren’t birds, as anyone would be able to tell if they saw the things up close. Birds, by and large, only had two eyes, didn’t have teeth, and their feathers certainly weren’t razor sharp. These were lesser demons…quite weak ones, to be sure, given that they had to limit themselves to the size of pigeons to infiltrate the school.

On the other hand, there were nearly a hundred of them, with one or two more arrive every few minutes, so there was probably more than enough to get the job done.

It took the flock of demons some time to break through the vent on the top of the roof…the one that Harold Spangler had recently made ward free. With a way in, the birds filed into the ventilation system of Southcliff High. True, they still had to find the Mother of Hell, but that shouldn’t be too hard…not with a few hundred things looking.

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From his position in the Observatory Lounge parking lot, armed with a pair of binoculars he had fetched from his car, Duncan McCragge’s suspicion meter went from “Huh…that’s odd” as the bird began to gather, to “Holy crap, we’re screwed” once they had shown themselves as being more than mere birds by tearing through metal.

“That can’t be normal,” he muttered to himself.

Stepping away from his lookout point, Duncan reached into pocket, and produced a radio. Chances were that class was in session, and that none of the Protectors would be able to have such communication devices on them, but it was worth a shot: “This is McCragge to any receiving Protector: possible demonic incursion into school via rooftop. Recommend extreme caution and confirmation of threat. Repeat: Possible demonic incursion into the school from the roof, please confirm threat.”

He had already started his car and was halfway down the mountain by the time the call went out.

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Oh, for the love of heaven, they could of at least tried to pass themselves off as normal. Jared thought to himself.

Finally, it was his turn. For a moment, his mind went blank: all he could think of was the first episode of some anime he had seen. However, he managed to shake that from his head and recollect his thoughts. “Hi, my name is Jared Greyhall. I was originally a student at Taylorsville, so I don’t know a lot of people here at Southcliff…”

He momentarily lost his train of thought as he thought he saw something move past the vent on the wall behind the teacher. “…but I hope that that won’t hamper my experience here…”

Another shape move past the vent, then another. The background murmur in the room picked up audibly as the more observant students started to pick up on the movement as well.

Oh…crap Jared thought to himself. “And did I mention that I learned some Latin over the summer? Allow me to share!”

Jared hurriedly launched into an exorcism. Technically it wouldn’t do much against lesser demons, but it was the first thing that came to mind.

In fact, it didn’t help at all. The exorcism did little but piss off the lesser demons in the vent, and by extension, brought more to this particular vent.

Finally, they had enough numbers to break the vent, and the demonic pigeons fluttered into the classroom.

((OOC: Again, these are pretty weak lesser demons…individually, they aren’t much of a threat, but there are over a hundred in the school, a few dozen in this classroom at least. They can fly, bite, and cut with their feathers and talons.

They won’t hurt Pamelia, but everyone else in the room is fair game for them.))

[The Artist Formerly Known as Hawk]

"The wards eh? Huh, guess I need to try and be more sly on how I go about things from now on then eh?", he said to Abdul, on hearing how he had been so easily picked out as a Protector, "but I'm a soldier, not a spy. I was chosen for my ability to kill things dead, not my ability to remain inconspicous. But yeah, there's a few wards up, nothing spectacular. We had the old school pretty much inpregnable, but most of the wards here are temporary, and not everywhere is sealed up yet."

It was then that Abdul shocked Don with his next question. "You mean they didn't even tell you her name??!!" Don was incredulous; he was used to high level intel, the idea of an ally not even knowing that kind of basic information was un-heard of to him. "Wow, I knew the Wardens weren't up to scratch on their intel gathering, but I thought they'd at least have told you that. Her name's Pamelia, Pamelia Barsonne. She's currently in an english class two rooms down the hall. Nice girl, she's-"

But then he was interrupted by a loud crackling sound coming from his hip, follwed by a distrought voice coming over the radio he wore there.

“This is McCragge to any receiving Protector: possible demonic incursion into school via rooftop. Recommend extreme caution and confirmation of threat. Repeat: Possible demonic incursion into the school from the roof, please confirm threat.”

Crap. He had been dreading this, but also expecting it, sooner rather than later. "Looks like things are about to pick up!" He said to Abdul as he grabbed his radio and responded.

"McCragge, this is Wight, copy that. Proceeding to rooftop to confirm threat, will advise, over."

He stood up and headed for the door, before turning back to the other Protector. "You can come if you want, but I'd prefer if you stayed close to the Mother. If I'm not back in five, or if the situation escalates, get her out of here, ASAP."

With that he turned and left, loosening the strap of his hidden holster, in case he suddenly needed to draw his weapon.

Guess my break is over then...

[Bard The 5th LW]

"Hero time already, huh." Abdul followed Don out of the room, "ok I'll stay behind, just don't get your ass killed."

He took a brief inventory; his gun was around his leg in a makeshift holster, he had several illusion and sheild sigils in his right pocket on post-it notes, and in his left pocket he had a few explosive Sigils on darts, and some poison sigils on darts.

As he ran to the English room were he presumed The Chosen was considering Donald's location, he looked through the window on the door and was not happy with what he saw. There were multiple bird-like demons fluttering around the classroom attacking the students.
"Shit!" Abdul yelled as he readied a dart and a shield. He opened the door and said the incantation setting a barrier around the students, he then said the incantation for the explosion, ignoring the bites he got from a few birds, e then lobbed the dart, killing several birds in an explosion similar to a hand-grenade. "Everyone out!" He yelled as the barrier dissapeared.

[Arcanum]

Marcus was in the middle of his lecture when he began to notice a very annoying clicking sound. He quickly scanned the room but didn't see anyone playing with a pen, or doing anything really. He had either managed to captivate his students or bore them to sleep. He tried to discern where it was coming from while keeping his composure in front of the students. It took him a while to realize it was coming from above him. Wondering what it could be he feigned stretching his back and looked up to see an air vent above him, with several red eyes staring back.

You're kidding me. Demons infiltrating so soon? This is very bad.

Marcus considered his options, but a sudden idea struck him.

"This excerpt here is actually one of my favorites," he told the class, pointing at a random spot on the papers on his desk. "It was originally written in Italian so I'll read you the original then give you a translation."

Marcus began his incantation-disguised-as-a-prayer, and luckily it would be easy to pass off as such. Most of the incantations he knew were some form of prayer to the Light. He spoke of protection, of the abyss, of harmony, and of preservation. He finished the first incantation, which created a barrier of ice inside the air duct. Whatever demon that was there would be trapped.

However he moved straight into a second incantation without pause. This one spoke of balance, of fury, and the divine light. There was a barely noticeable flash from the duct and the ice barrier melted away, dripping water onto his shoulders. Marcus looked up and saw no eyes looking back at him.

"Hmm that's odd," he said to the class as he moved out from under the dripping vent. "Something must be wrong with the air ducts. I'll go find a janitor, I won't be too long. Feel free to talk amongst yourselves, but don't be too loud."

Marcus walked calmly out of the class, but as soon as the door closed he bolted. He tried to remember what class Pamelia was in.

Think Marcus, think! Duncan told you her schedule, you even wrote it down, you just forgot to bring it with you. Think dammit!

As Marcus ran in what he hoped was the right direction he could hear screams coming from down a hallway.

That sounded like it came from... English class! Of course, I'm an idiot!

Marcus ran as fast as he could, hoping to get there in time, hoping that everything was under control. He arrived at the classroom to see a horde of students run out in terror. He could also make out a man near the door with a look of determination on his face. A Protector then.

"Everyone this way!" He yelled to the students. "Quickly now! This isn't a drill! Get to the main entrance of the school but don't go outside!"

The main entrance was obviously warded, and since the demons hadn't entered through there it was probably still intact. If the students reached it they should be safe. Marcus caught the eyes of the other Protector near the door and yelled, "Is this everyone?"

Hopefully the man would understand the real question. 'Is the Chosen still in the class?' He couldn't make out Pamelia among the panicked students but he needed to make sure. If she was in trouble, he'd help her. If not, he'd help the students. While he didn't want to leave these kids on their own while demons were roaming about, he had a job to do.