Event #2 "Trust nobody"

[Madonna Truman]

Madonna headed out of her office down the corridor straight to the teacher's lounge. She noticed that the hallway to the nearest classroom was blocked by a mess of concrete and wood... It didn't make any sense of how could this happen, but she didn't have time to deal with it. First of all, she needed to get her ability to speak again. Once the woman has entered the room her priorities were clear. Get some water, stop coughing, talk to the kids. Simple. With a sharp movement, the principal took one of the unbroken glass from the cupboard, poured a glass and drank it. Done.

She turned around letting out a sigh mixed with a cough and took another sip."I'm so sorry," she apologized for her behavior and let out one last cough before she straightened her back, observing the mess a possible earthquake has created. "Is anybody hurt?" she addressed the kids who gathered around her. "And have any of you seen Andrei?"

[Esmeralda Ortiz]

Esme had followed Madonna still cradling Riley with Al's help. Everwhere had been a complete wreck. It was like someone took the school and literally shook it to pieces. The teacher's lounge came close. Good. That was where she was planning to go anyways in terms of collecting supplies. She remembered the painkillers and the notes about Miss Kishi. That would be answered for later. Right now, Madonna needed to collected herself. Madonna drank something from the cupboard and apologized, looking at them and asking about Andrei.

"Andrei? Copper's owner? Before the blackout, he came into the auditorium...he came to pick up Copper..." Esme felt a huge pang of guilt stab her in the heart. She and Tara had seen Copper. Amanda had told them they would meet up. But...Amanda didn't show up. She closed her eyes, imagining the awkward way Amanda laughed, how cute the girl had been. A bit squirrely, but she liked her. Amanda hadn't been in the auditorium. Was she okay? Esme shook her head firmly. No. She had to stay in the present and not the past.

"Pidge has a nose injury, Al's cut and Becca's cut, but other than that...." she trailed off.

[Naomi Smith]

Finally safe and sound - at least for now. Naomi had arrived with others to teacher's lounge. Mrs. Truman took a sip from the cup filled with water. Naomi wanted also water, her throat was dry, but she didn't trust the quality of the water anymore since the earthquake might had injured the water pipes.

"Is anybody hurt? And have any of you seen Andrei?" the headmaster asked.

Esmeralda told that Andrei visited the auditorium before the fall. She also reported all the injuries of the group.

"Our bodies have started to normalize after the fall, but we still have to be careful" Naomi reminded, "and of course, Riley's condition is still pretty unstable."

[Something]

Esmeralda's phone buzzed with a text from an unknown number:

Stab the principal with a kitchen knife on the counter.

[Esmeralda Ortiz]

"Oh, and don't forget Zak's freakout," Esmeralda nodded to Naomi.

The freakout had been absolutely terrifying. She had only been paying slight attention as she had been focused on making sure the others were awake and alert. The group had left the office to follow Madonna. If anyone had clues about Miss Kishi's dismissal it was her. It was so much to absorb that Esme didn't even hear her phone give the first vibration. The second vibration came up. Weird. Where they were prior service was unavailable. She pulled out and whispered,

"Holy shit."

The command was clear as day and it made her dark skin go pale.
Stab the principal with a kitchen knife on the counter

Knife? What knife? The lights were dimming. Yet in the faint glow, Esmeralda saw something glinting. She had only seen plastic knives in the area. That was a clear butcher knife. Lethal and with the right amount of force, could be dangerous.

"Guys..."

She held out her phone, showing everyone the threat, including the intended target.

[Something]

Before anybody could react, the phone's screen glitched revealing a pair of pale white pupilless eyes and an unrealistically wide smile flashing across the screen. "You IDIOT!" Esmerelda heard a robotic voice inside her head, making her drop the phone, her hands covering her ears from the static noise.

"You think you DO have a choice?" the voice said turning to a maniacal laughter. Everybody in the room could see how Madonna suddenly cried out and grabbed her chest, bending from pain. The woman was pale, looked like she was about to fall on her knees. Panting, her eyes darted towards the counter where the knife was. Her hand gently clasping around the knife's handle.

"In this world, it's kill or BE killed," the voice burst out in waves of laughter only to be interrupted by a the principal herself. "NO!" Madonna yelled, her eyes burning with fury. Her hand with a knife flew in the air and stabbed herself in the stomach. "I won't let you hurt them," she stabbed herself again. "Leave my kids alone!" with the tears in her eyes she yelled and fall to the floor, the knife falling out of her hands. The voices inside Esmeralda's head were finally gone. "Leave them alone"

Maodnna is slowly bleeding out. If you don't help her by the end of the next event - she will die.
Esmeralda lost 1 sanity point.

[Madonna Truman]

"Before the blackout, he came into the auditorium... he came to pick up Copper..."
Copper? Andrei's dog? Madonna rose an eyebrow in suspicion. What did the dog do INSIDE the school? And HOW did it managed to get past her?! Maybe that's why... "I... met Andrei on the second floor; he looked like he was in... a hurry," she said, furrowing her eyebrows in concentration.

"Pidge has a nose injury, Al's cut and Becca's cut, but other than that..."
The woman shook her head and reached inside her pocket to check on the key from her drawer, there should be some bandages and medicaments in there. After a small research, she realized that the key was nowhere to be seen. She tried to keep the straight face for her students. "Don't worry, we will find our way to the nursery!" she assured them and put her cup on the drawer.

"Our bodies have started to normalize after the fall, but we still have to be careful and of course, Riley's condition is still pretty unstable," the woman gave Naomi a short nod and pursed her lips. At least they all were safe and whole.

"Oh, and don't forget Zak's freakout."
Well... almost.

"Holy shit."

Esmeralda let out a swear, as she was staring at her phone. "Language!" the woman wanted to scold the student almost automatically but instead she asked: "What's wrong, dear?" She shouldn't have asked. The moment the girl showed her the phone, Madonna felt her body freeze in an instant, like the physical sensation of her mind's shutting down.

Everything else was in a blur. She knew something was wrong. She knew she should have done something earlier. She can't let it, him, her... whatever it was - win. "NO!" she refused to follow the order of the unknown force! She knew what's she gonna do. She will give it what it wants. "Just leave the kids alone..." she thought before falling down on her knees and onto the floor.

"Kids," the woman whispered coughing. "The drawer. The key... I lost it. You..." she coughed some blood and continued. "Open it. Something's changed. June... this school..."

Sadly, Madonna couldn't finish her train of thought and lost consciousness.

[Riley R. Owen]

After the lights went out Riley was unconsciouss she entered a dream like state and had no clue or idea what was going on.

She suddenly open her eyes and sees her mother right in front of her as they are saying "Riley time to come home!" she felt warmth, and happiness to see her mother and started running up to them and gave them the biggest hug as she was crying happily, not knowing that it was all a dream. Her mother smiled down at her wiping her tears away as she spoke softly "Your friends need you Riley.." Riley looked at her mother confused, "My friends...?" she quickly looked around and notice that all around her was darkness.

Riley looked up at her mother as tears were streaming down her face, "I'm dreaming aren't I...?" her mother sadly nodded, "But I'm always here Riley, but right now your friends need you..Please wake up." Riley mother kissed her forehead as she started to fade away,
Riley reached out her hand trying to stop her mother from leaving her side as she shouted "MOTHER NO DON'T LEAVE I NEED YOU!!" Riley's mother looked back at her with a smile before vanishing, "Wake up Riley." She looked away from Riley and vanished right before her eyes. Riley wiped her tears and suddenly looked around the room.

"Whats going on...?" She felt her heart race as she can't remember any that happened since the lights went out, she looked at Esmse, and Al in confused. "What on earth is happening!" as she felt a sharp pain on her cheek(She got a small cut on her cheek) but ignored it as she saw Madonna on the floor unconscious, normally she would faint at the sight of blood but she knew there was something going on and she forced herself to stay awake and told her self ["No I must stay awake...I have too..."], she sat down on her needs not noticing that she is still crying from her dream of her mother.

[Naomi Smith]

"Don't worry, we will find our way to the nursery!" Mrs. Truman comforted them.

Naomi knew Mrs. Truman as a strict woman, but most of the students had told warming stories about her. After all, she was Ryan's mother so maybe she understood these kids a bit better than "average" human being. Nursery would be a place to be right now. All their wounds weren't that bad, but in the mess like this wounds will turn quickly into infected wounds. So far they didn't had found any medical supplies, or if they had then Naomi didn't know about it.

Naomi heard Esmeralda whispering something, but she didn't catch what she was saying. Mrs. Truman seemed to heard it and asked from the girl was something wrong. Soon Esmeralda showed her phone - a text message precisely, but before Naomi had time to read it Esmeralda started to act weird. Suddenly she dropped the phone and covered her ears, like she was protecting herself from some terrible sound. But the point was - there was no voice, or sound others could hear.

"Esmeralda, what's wrong?!" Naomi tried to get eye contact with the girl but she didn't seem to notice her. Not getting attention, Naomi grab the phone from floor and read the text.

Stab the principal with a kitchen knife on the counter.

"Oh my god..." she said out loud and left phone to the floor. She tried to get Esmeralda's attention by putting her hands on her shoulder.
"Esmeralda, get yourself tog--!" Naomi tried to "woke up" her fellow club member but was interrupted by Mrs. Truman's scream. Next thing Naomi realized that the headmaster was stabbing herself with a knife. Did everyone just got mad?

'What is going on?' Naomi thought in fear. She didn't had the courage to stop Mrs. Truman, so all she could do was just watch this woman stabbing herself to death. Mrs. Truman was praying and crying that something (heh, a pun) would leave them alone. Who had to leave them alone? Who was the person she was screaming to? Naomi had so many questions, but at this time she didn't knew if she even wanted them to answered.

Mrs. Truman fell to the floor, and also the knife fell from her hands. "The drawer. The key... I lost it. You..." woman tried to speak while coughing. "Open it. Something's changed. June... this school..." she continued. After that she lost consciousness. Naomi quickly rushed next to woman and checked her condition. The headmaster was bleeding - really badly.

"She's not dead - yet. We have to do something before she bleeds out!" Naomi yelled to the others and moved Mrs. Truman's body to different position so she could breath while being unconscious.

[Esmeralda Ortiz]

No sooner had Esmeralda showed everyone the threat then everything went to shit. Her ears were blasted with a noise not unlike static. A robotic voice berated and insulted her. She crouched with both ears clapped over her head, shutting her eyes. It was like Siri was taunting her. She stayed rooted, wincing under the pain. It hurt like hell. She stayed there until very slowly, the static died.

Esme righted herself, but the nightmare continued outside of her head. Madonna had stabbed herself...or had Naomi read the threat? It didn’t matter. What did matter was the old woman was going to die if they didn’t act quick.

Naomi was moving the woman somewhere comfortable. Good. The Latina washed her hands with soap and water, grabbed a bundle of rags to create a tourniquet, running to check the stab wound site. The phone told Esme to stab, but this time, Esme was going to do the opposite. She would save the woman. She applied pressure to the stab wound with a towel, watching the cloth turn bright red.

“Naomi, how’s her breathing? We have to check on everything we can.”

[Rebecca Rolfe]

As Rebecca found the others, her thoughts kept getting darker and darker,stupid Pidge, she thought..though she was right, why , she was so annoying she could understand why boys did not want her, or  the school slacker wanted her. she scowled looking about the area...when  her tall shadow appeared in the room more she heard more chaos, frowning as she heard Esme get hurt; her eyes looking a little-sadden,due to it,she worried for her friend..  she saw blood, -Watching Madonna try to stab her self, threw a knife in her heart, as Rebecca quickly grabbed that knife, Rebecca's hand froze on the knifes sharp part sternly grabbing it so she couldn't hurt her self further., but no cuts.not deep enough."W..what happened to Andrei?"she'd ask, sternly. having heard part of that moments before;her eyes glanced at the knife she held firmly, as she looked around some-more for more paper towels, and such to help Madonna. This was a site that she did not expect to see, the teacher she looked up too, down and out. He never returned her feelings, but..she cared...her eyes grabbing the nearest knife on the floor,that Madonna had dropped,  to keep it away from Madonna, eyeing it - as she looked around her frame searching for  napkins, or some-thing near by...she saw the cup, that Madonna had drank from. those eyes narrowed."Who let her drink water here? It's all-ways toxic after an earthquake. or so I was taught..''she'd state .No wonder they hated her, she sounded like a pathetic want- to- be- geek.ugh. her eyes narrowed at her self. She should be Pidge, and Pidge should be her, Pidge was so much more smarter, brilliant, and held her self well,maturer than she did. and She was older than Pidge! shaking her head Rebecca looked around and heard those words following others; No good deed goes unpunished, Rebecca, though.. a  good deed .. never mind that , thought Rebecca, your better than that, said Rebecca.. those words read through her mind, and she spoke now.

Rebecca's eyes looked at Madonna as she got annoyed when she knelt down to try and help her, her hair got in the way of things- grabbing the knife, Rebecca grabbed her  hair and cut the extra ends of it.right into a short hair style.She didn't need the long hair anymore, as they might've thought she cared about.

This was a serious situation, Rebecca looked around again for something ,fabric, anything.her hand rested on the woman's chest she checked her breathing, hair peices flew all over as they landed around.People might deem it as stupid right now, but Madonna needed help and she could not have her hair flying about getting her annoyed.

[Rebecca- Made a perception check.]

[Administrator]

Dice result: 1D10 => 1
Absolute failure; -1 health point.

---

Looking for some sort of supplies or fabric to help the poor woman, Becca got hurt on her own! When she was rummaging in one of the drawers, her hand accidentally got in a way of a broken glass and the girl cut her wrist. It wasn't a deep cut but still bled profusely.

Becca lost 1 health point.

[Catherine "Pidge" Santorini]

As she entered Ms. Truman's office, she reflected on what a few people back in the room had told her as she was leaving. First, yet the least important, it turned out that Naomi used Aussie, the stuff in the purple bottle. That was nice to know, at least, but the thing that got to her the most was Rebecca's little comment. The more she thought about it, the more she clanked the bat against the grounf

"The yelling wasn't the point, Pidge..." She remembered the taller woman grumbling at her, "She hurt herself. Who knows how long we'll be before we get a medic? so lets not try to get anyone else hurt, right? right."

Yeah, because the school nurse could definitely make it over here right now and tend to Al's hand. She can just run across the ruined school and come here in a jiffy! Pidge rolled her eyes as she mentally responded to her acquaintance's previous statement, since she didn't allow her to finish. Though perhaps she had been too stubborn to realize the pain that Al went through to get the bat... No, that couldn't have been it. As soon as Becca made her way into the lounge, she had to apologize to her immediately.

She sat down at on of the tables and listened to the upcoming conversations. The principal had asked if anyone had gotten hurt, and Esmeralda gave her the run-down of all of the shit that had happened to them.

"Pidge has a nose injury," Esme stated first; she guessed that.

"But I'm okay, Ms. Truman. No need to worry, " Catherine interjected, knowing how Ms. Truman tended to worry about her students. Who knew how she'd react to hearing about how her 'kids' were faring in this situation...

Esme cursed and showed the group her phone. She had gotten a strange message telling her to stab the principal. Almost as soon as she presented the message, the screen glitched. It seemed as if there was a face in the screen. Pidge stumbled backwards a little bit. It was experiencing a jump scare in a video game for the first time. What was even more shocking was Madonna's actions. It was almost as if she was being possessed by something. She didn't want to say this aloud, but this was definitely some supernatural force's doing.

Riley was waking up slowly, yet surely. Thank goodness she was alive. Pidge's eyes glanced towards Esmeralda tending to her wounds.

Speaking of, there she was... with the knife that Ms. Truman used to stab herself."Beck! What are you doing?!" She tried to wrestle the knife from her hand, but the deed was done. Her wrists were tarnished with little red lines and a mess of long onyx locks fell to the floor. As she tried to find something to clean up the blood, she cut herself further on the drawers. This was all my fault, Pidge thought, hyperventilating. She had to do something! "I'm sorry about what I said. I was a bit too harsh back there." Pidge began her apology, "I get it. It's a strange situation we're in to say the least, and I know you don't want anyone to get hurt. I guess I was too focused on what I thought was necessary at the time. Do you forgive me? You could punch me in the nose again for being an annoying little gremlin if you want to." She took off her jacket and dabbed her sleeve onto Becca's bleeding wrists. "There... is this better?"

[Zak Gully]

Esmeralda was really starting to bug Zak. They'd gone and done the whole 'independent, young women' thing and carried Riley over here without him. That in itself was fine enough, but when she in addition started telling people about his... episode, first chance she got, Zak was furious.

"Oh, and don't forget Zak's freakout,"
He'd wanted to strangle her, his face going bright red and his jaws clasping. I'M NOT A FREAK! he'd wanted to scream, but soon enough she was pre-occupied with something else. Zak had been loitering in the back of the group, by the door, and wasn't one of the first people Esmeralda would want to show a message to anyway, so he never caught glimpse of her phone. He did notice, however, when she dropped to the ground in much a like fashion as he had. Some sadistic side of him turned his lips upward in a smile. Serves you right for being a bitch, karma bites back.

What he was not so happy about was everyone else going bat shit crazy in the next 10 seconds. Suddenly the headmaster was on the floor bleeding, Rebecca's hair was gone, and people were crowding around the unconscious body on the floor, leaking massive amounts of blood. Zak took a step back in dazed shock. By now he had completely accepted the fact that this had to be a dream, but it was still turning into a weird, scary nightmare. He wanted to wake up now.

Still, everything didn't hit him as hard as it should have. With everything happening so fast and so many things happening at once, coupled with the surety that none of this was real, made him slightly numb to the whole shebang. Like VR-playing a horror game. He was on the outside, observing, not taking part. This whole scene was just a fucked up scenario produced by his brain to try to scare the shit out of him. He'd always known his fellow club members were insane, but this circus was too much even for them.

"You guys are insane.." he said, and stepped backwards into the hallway again. Nightmare or not, he wouldn't want to be the next person to be dragged into this. Nightmares might not be real, but they could still very much FEEL real, and he just wanted to stay away from it. Within seconds the whole room had turned into blood and hair. Weirdly enough, one thought stood out to him even now in the crazed, unfolding scene:

At least they definitely won't be talking about me anymore.

[Rebecca Rolfe]

Rebecca sighed deeply"Yea, but look at what we are dealing with Zak?" she'd ask looking at him."This whole THING is insane."She'd wince holding her hand."OW SHIT!" she'd swear verbally, eyeing the glass."it wasn't the knife Pidge!" she'd let it go, though." It was glass in the drawers..."she'd explain eeerily calm, why was Pidge helping her? she did apologize.. "It's Okay, I can be a bitch.''she'd explain." I 've been too whiny, cranky annoying as well due to finals.''she'd explain watching Zak go."Be safe,Zak.''she'd say softly...those big eyes of her 's looking concerned at Pidge."Violence never solves anything , but talking does.''she'd smile."I am fully aware I am annoying, and am trying to work it out.''she'd hug Pidge if allowed."We both work together all the time, we should not hate each-other for stupid things.'' noted Rebecca.