Westbrook Academy for Metahumans: Forums

"You did this to us!" They said it in unison.

Each of the brothers stood in-front of the stairs that lead to the dorms, apparently having been waiting for Cassandra to come in on her way to change out of her uniform at the end of classes. They still wore theirs.

They each had a hand pointed to an identical boil that had formed above opposite eyebrows on their foreheads. She could swear seeing them now, they were getting uglier. They had even started to develop hunched backs.

"You did this to us!" "Witches can cast curses!" "You can cast curses!" "You cast a curse on us!"

She had to bite hard on her lip to stop herself from bursting into a, albeit frustrated, laugh.

"So you two are going to come blame me every time something goes wrong? What happened to me being a nice witch?"

They looked to eachother then back up at her, keeping their hands pointed to their disfiguringly large boils.

"We think so..." one of them said, while the other shrugged, "... and we still think so," he said after, while the first brother shrugged back.

She shook her head with an even more frustrated expression, giving them a huffed sigh.

"I'm not going to deal with this right now, guys. You need to leave before I really do cast a curse on you and turn you into the little toads you are."

"Magic has a stigma," one of them said, with a somewhat familiar tone. She couldn't put a finger on why it sounded it so right, though.

"You should should go outside. You get better reception," the other one told her.

She threw a hand upward toward the dorms with an annoyed stomp of her foot, closing her eyes under furrowed brows and wrinkling her little button nose, shouting. "Leave!"

They wrestled eachother up the stairs as they scampered away from her.

She took a deep breath at the base of the stairs, settling herself while rubbing at the bridge of her nose, her eyes still closed.

Then she felt her phone vibrate from inside her book bag. Reaching in she pulled it out and read the incoming call name; Brother David.

She headed toward the doors while watching after the brothers with a still frustrated but curious turn on her brow.

"Hey, David."

"Hey, little sister. Sorry I didn't call you a few days ago. It got busy around here."

"That's okay, newborns make spur of the moment another one of those remember whens. I get it."

The man on the other man gave a chuckle. "Yeah. I'm collecting a lot of those. One more, and I'll have enough of them to cash in on this duffel bag I saw in their magazine."

She still talked with a bothered tone, but made her banter. "You should save up on them for the collectible stamps."

"Something wrong, Cass? Still not getting any sleep?"

"Just dealing with these sniveling little freshman who think I'm the wicked witch of the west."

He gave her a disscomforting, long sigh. "This is what I was afraid of, Cass, sending you alone to the other side of the states. Magic has a stigma, and..."

She cut him off. "What did you say?"

"What, that magic has a stigma?"

That was the tone that sounded so familiar.

"I have to call you back, David. Sorry."

She closed her phone before she heard what he said next, and running back through the commons to catch up to those brothers, until she ended up at the door to her own room.

She dragged her feet behind her, entering feeling a little defeated.

She slumped onto her bed sprawled out, looking at the ceiling.

"Magic ruins lives. Magic ruined my life."

Chelle stormed off with that the other day, while she was watching the sail boats in Founder's Fall with her friends. She used the term loosely.

Cassandra laid there for a while, reminding herself, maybe convincing herself, that magic was a tool. It could destroy but it could also build, like all tools.

She sat up, reached for her notepad, and started writing a letter to a dead friend.

Lucas...

(to read what happened after, please see this post in the Ghost Hunt thread)
http://www.westbrooksg.com/forums/viewt ... 075#p13075

She returned to her room, tearing off the side of the paper from her homework sheet as she let herself in.

Taking a tack from the board above her study desk, she pinned the slip where she could see it from the whole room.

• Like anything else, it depends on who is using it. Magic can't do anything on its own. Good people will use it to do good. Bad people will use it to do bad things. That's what the Dream Doctor said.

She then sat down at the computer, setting her books and other effects to the side; one hand on the keyboard while the other thumbed at the pendant that hung around her neck.

In the search bar, she typed Dream Doctor.

He used magic for good.

Cute Boy With Book For A Face

• Cute Boy With Book For A Face said:
  I'm sorry. Didn't mean to make it sound like I was trying to control you or anything.
  received: 1:02am
  
  I said:
  You know, its fine that no one else likes me. I can handle that. But when the kid who likes to kiss me has to tell me that, I don't want to have to handle that.
  sent: 1:14am
  
  Cute Boy With Book For A Face said:
  I like you. I just wanted you to know so maybe you could do something. That's all, I promise.
  received: 1:15am
  
  Cute Boy With Book For A Face said:
  I just found out tonight when Sam told me about it.
  received: 1:15am
  
  I said:
  Do something like what? Change? Wicked simple. I'll get right on it.
  sent: 1:17am
  
  Cute Boy With Book For A Face said:
  I just mean maybe turn down the magic related jokes around those people. It's up to you, I just thought it might help.
  received: 1:19am
  
  I said:
  Oh. Got it. They can make funny about theirs, but our ability is a little different so we have to keep quiet. Noted. Thanks.
  sent: 1:20am
  
  Cute Boy With Book For A Face said:
  I hate to admit it, but yeah. A lot of people around here don't like magic. I know it isn't fair and I've been trying to deal with it since I got here.
  received: 1:22am
  
  Cute Boy With Book For A Face said:
  I wish it was different. I thought coming here to this school would be different from my others, that maybe people here could accept it.
  received: 1:23am
  
  I said:
  Nope. They were the minority. Now they're the cool kids. On top of the food chain.
  sent: 1:25am
  
  Cute Boy With Book For A Face said:
  Yeah, and we are always the minority. I understand that, you know I do.
  received: 1:26am
  
  I said:
  Magic has a stigma.
  sent: 1:29am

Cassandra sat at her study desk, typing into a search engine every combination of Dream Doctor, Paragon City, and Circle of Thorns that she could think of.

Everything she could find about this Dream Doctor all revolved around his discovering and banishing of the Circle of Thorns. There was nothing else, not about his first time seen in Paragon or when he retired, if he even did; aside from the short comments about a secret club of mystics, magicians, and scholars, who banded together with him in 1933, but most of that information she found on a website that also had a link to a compendium on homebrew rules for the old edition of Cellars and Centaurs. So she took it for what it was; a conspiracy theory.

But that whole time she read, she had something on the back of her mind. Something her dad said.

“Maybe you should get out of your social circle.”

Sure, but Cheer Squad? That would go over well. In with all those pepped up, loud cheerioes and all their popularity and hair spray. Then she would have to tell people that, yes, she is a cheerleader. How embarrassing.

But it would be nice to be seen as something other than the witch, or that gothic girl with all the make-up. Even if not, no one has ever had something bad to say about a girl in a cheerleading uniform.

She opened a new tab, going to the Westbrook Academy's homepage, following the directory to extra curricular and sports, pulling up the Westbrook Mustangs Cheerleaders. Then went back to her reading of the Dream Doctor.

If there really was a group of mystics and scholars out there, or if he was still out there somewhere, they may be able to help her. Give her some insight on her fore-mothers' past; on their grimoire.

She would have to ask Lucas.

She closed the tab, leaving the cheerleading page open while she stepped away from the desk, collecting her bathing suit from the dresser and began to change for the beach party; sure to pack a lot of sunblock.

Maybe one of those cheerioes would be there.

Maybe she would talk to them.

Sunday's party had come and gone, and she had not found a single Mustangs cheerleader to talk to. None of the few that she knew of, anyway.

She leaned over an untouched breakfast in the cafeteria, with her elbows on opposite sides of the plate to rest her head on clasped hands. In front of her across the table where those two brothers.

They had started to sit with her everyday at breakfast and lunch; everyday she didn't take her food somewhere else to eat, at least. Sometimes they didn't say anything, even look at her. Other days they wouldn't shut up. This was one of those days.

She moved from looking at one to the other, keeping up with their back and forth. She was getting better at it.

"It was green and with glowing little things in it." "It looked delicious." "It smelled like it looked." "Like little glowing things."

They were getting uglier. She was coming around to their smell, though. Even if their faces did not look very similar, their bodies did. From behind, you could not tell the two apart. Standing only as high as her elbows, they were round with two sets of chins and a roll of their stomach that hung over the front of their pants. Their backs where hunched with a tall hump at the top. Their eyes were large and set a little too far apart. Their hair was a knotted mess of red curls that looked like they cut it themselves with a spork.

"So we told Mrs. Fandango that." "So she told us," this they said together, with a smile, "Thanks, boys."

Cassandra stopped them. "No she didn't."

They nodded together, speaking over eachother in sync again. It was creepy how they did that. "Yes she did."

"Mrs. Fandango doesn't talk to anyone."

"She likes us." "We like her food."

Cassandra gave a long, drawn out sigh, raising her hands high enough to rub her forehead. She looked up to the clock on the wall and saw that breakfast period was not even half over. Right then, seeing the few friends she had sat in front of her, she made her decision.

"Then you can have mine, too," she said, sliding her plate toward them while sitting up. Grabbing her things, shouldering her bag, she made her way out of the cafeteria and headed toward the gym.

There, she knocked on the office door that read Kerry Campbell.

"Coach Kerry? I want to be a cheerleader."