Creighton stood up. Sometimes you just vote for action by where you put yourself. "I can't imagine she's having a great first day of school. She was brought up on stage, it nearly caused a riot, she helped with the water from the fire alarm going off but I'm betting she's not getting a lot of thank yous for it."

He grabbed up his lunch trash. "So lets start with something mundane like looking around before resorting to other means."

Creighton walked to the trash bins and looked ready to go for a walk.

I wanna let Talberon post again if he's going to before I post for Terry again, but I have opened a thread for the people that go looking for Lesleigh. You don't have to stay together, even if you go to that thread.

link to a message in this game

Sorry, went out of town for the day. I also have been drowning in work right as things seemed to slow down for others. Should be mostly back for a bit.

Tal wipes his hands and throws that napkin on his tray on top of some uneaten and unappetizing food. He stands up dramatically in one clean and precise motion. "You don't have to ask me twice. She's my friend."

Following Creighton's lead, he also walked towards a trash bin and cleared his tray.

Pandora gets the impression from Kenzie's feedback that she wants to spend some alone time with her family rather than spend all weekend with a classmate whom she'll see all the time at school anyway, so she suggests, "Maybe go Kenzie Friday night. Come home Saturday night."

Seeing Creighton and the others getting up, one-by-one, the Ukrainian girl guesses lunch must be done with, so she gathers her own trash and follows along with the others to deposit it into the nearest waste receptacle.

Jason let out a quick short blast of air through his nose, almost like a bull, before standing and following.

He meant what he said about Lesleigh but maybe...It wouldn't be a bad idea to check up on her. Their last discussion hadn't ended on a good note, especially with Jill coming in with all the subtly of a battering ram.

"How shall we search?"

None of them really knew their way around the school but it seemed the decision had been made.

"Well, I wish you luck, but from the way she chewed me out, I don't think she needs or wants any help," Terry says with a shrug.

You have approximately thirty to forty-five minutes of time to work with before the bell rings. The areas you can travel to, in no particular order, are:

• Dormitory Building
• School Office Building
• Gymnasium
• Grassy Field
• Classroom Building
• Convenience Store

"That sounds good!" Kenzie said to Pandora with a smile, before looking back to the others and standing up as well. Her eyes turned even more unfocused than usual as she thought back. "Okay, then... Where did we see her last, at the gymnasium? That's not much to go on, but you'd see her if she was here in the cafeteria, right? Could she have gone somewhere else to eat?" Assuming she ate at all, anyways, but Kenzie kept that thought to herself.
This message was last edited by the player at 02:39, Fri 22 Nov 2019.

Lesleigh was not seen at the headcount. The last time Kenzie saw her she was still in the gymnasium holding up a swimming pool's worth of water.

Once the others seem to have taken care of their lunch waste, Pandora draws closer to Jason and looks up at him. Her hands hang loosely at her sides.

The Ukrainian girl wonders how Jason and his comrades learned soldiering, so she asks the soldier boy, "What camp Jason learn soldier things? Camp America? Camp Knifes in Eye?" She points up at the twin dagger-eyes pin attached to Jason's beret with the pointer finger of her right hand.

She asks, "How many training camps Jason go?"

Jason is silent as Kenzie speaks but seeing no one else seems to be answering he speaks up hesitantly,

"The gymnasium would be a good place to start..." He thinks on what he knows of Lesleigh and where she might go, "The field maybe?" He could see her sitting, knees to her chest on the grass.

He lapses back into silence before Pandora sidles up to him, prompting a small double take followed by a couple of blinks at her slew of questions.

Jason was still having trouble getting a read on the blond girl, she moves with a dangerous sort of confidence that came with people who knew how dangerous they could be.

He couldn't shake his first impression of her as some kind of intelligence operative and couldn't help but wonder if her broken English was perhaps a affectation.

"Just the one..." He answered somewhat haltingly, surprised and off footed by the smaller teenager.

"Starting where we last saw her sounds like a great idea." Creighton moved with the assembled group of new friends. Or soon to be friends. People he hoped would turn out to be friends.

"That's a good thought too Kenzie. If one of us knew her better that'd be great but honestly, I'm just worried."

"Anyone have any particular gifts that would be useful in finding someone?"

Pandora raises her right eyebrow, questioningly, at Jason's reply and says back to him, "Jason only train one summer? Hmmm." She finds it unlikely the soldier boy only spent one summer learning soldiering, but she doesn't press the matter further.

Instead, she hangs her thumbs in the front pockets of her jeans and begins walking along with the group. She follows along like a bird in a flock--staying with the group as a whole but not particularly close to any one person as they move about.
This message was last edited by the player at 08:48, Mon 25 Nov 2019.

Now that their excursion was coming together, Kenzie stood up again and took a hold of her large equipment trunk to wheel behind her. She smiled when Creighton said she'd had a good thought, then looked back at her trunk when he asked about gifts. "Mm... Kind of, but it would probably attract too much attention," she said softly. Her manner suggested this was a topic she was keeping close to her chest. "Probably better if I just tag along and make suggestions. So, first stop gymnasium, then?"

"Gym sounds as good a place to start as any. She wasn't at lunch, and there was some food place across the way. But I'm not sure if that's her style."

Tal straightened his coat and strides along Creighton. "Special gifts like that? Nope. I could set off the alarms again and have everyone regroup outside. She'd have to show then. If you're up for some deja vu."

Creighton looked interested when Kenzie said she could do something but it was too much attention grabbing. "When we have more time and don't care so much about attention you'll have to explain that." It was a request with curiosity nothing more.

"Thanks for the offer Tal, let's call that Plan G or something, you know, an emergency notion if we need it."

For the moment there was nothing more to do than old fashioned walking around and looking. Granted, there had been a thing when he'd taken a good look at her earlier. But it didn't seem likely he'd be able to use that thing from a distance.

Pandora keeps an eye out for the little witch girl, but otherwise just continues to casually follow along with others while keeping her thumbs hooked into her front pockets.

The group of students finds themselves in front of the gymnasium with the most uncomfortable possible person to encounter: Principal Alban Rainsford, with a lit cigarette in his mouth, well within the school grounds wherein smoking is legally prohibited. The gymnasium doors are all closed and locked aside from the one he's standing in front of, which is braced open.

He eyes the kids without apparent concern and says, "The gym is off limits until it's cleaned up."

Jason eyes slowly slide from the lit cigarette to the no smoking sign on the wall, and then back to the principal.

He chose not to say anything.

He wasn't quite sure what to make of the principal...The way he had introduced him and the cadets, and then Lesleigh had seemed more than a bit...theatrical. As much as he despised politics he was, at least aware of them and he couldn't help but wonder if that's what was going on here.

He wondered if maybe someone other than the US government had investments in the institute.

He looks around at the other students, a bit awkwardly as if he was waiting for someone to break the silence.

Finally he coughs, "Is...Is Lesleigh in there?"

The Principal. A man who should command respect. A man who should be worthy of respect. And yet, so far, Creighton had a hard time respecting him. Every decision the man made. Bringing the girl up on stage. Fight club with no warning.

Smoking was really the least of his sins.

"Just wanted to make sure that Lesleigh was OK. Occured to us that she wasn't in lunch with everyone else."

He addressed the man directly and as politely as he could manage. The office deserved some reverence even if the man hadn't shown he earned it yet.

Alban looks over the gaggle of kids with an unreadable expression. "You're all friends of hers, I take it? I'm curious just how well you know her? How did you meet?"

Tal strides towards the front of the grouping of students. He looks up towards the principal with his hands on his hips confidently.

"Well, I met Lesleigh at the festival last week. She helped get me up to speed on Rainsford and was the first welcoming face I met."

He gestures towards his classmates as to say that they soon followed Lesleigh's friendliness. Tal looks like he's concerned that his sister was hurt. His face scrunched into a serious position, trying to hold back any emotions.

 "Is she okay? Please tell me that she's not hurt.
This message was last edited by the player at 14:17, Wed 04 Dec 2019.

"I haven't actually met her yet, I'm just tagging along, sir," Kenzie said politely. She wasn't really sure what to make of the principal yet. He didn't seem to run a tight ship at all, but maybe that was a necessary style for a school like this, it wasn't like she would know. In any case, it seemed like honesty was the best policy here. She knew who Lesleigh was, but they hadn't actually met face to face. She still thought it was a good idea to check on her after what she'd heard in the cafeteria, though.

"Any friend of Tal's is bound to be a friend of mine." Creighton added. It was funny of all the people he'd met at the fair, he must have missed her. "Considering the school harbors Hexenjagers it seems reasonable to be concerned about her safety." It was his honest concern and he had no fear of sharing it.

"The festival..." Jason echoes Tal but doesn't say anything more, hanging back slightly and trying to get a read on the Principal. However now that Creighton mentioned it there were a startling amount of semi-paramilitary groups with almost free reign of the school.

He said this knowing he was part of one of those paramilitary groups but at least he had some oversight and a chain of command.