Start of Summer Scavenger Hunt PV SHC Finished

Interacting with the Blue Team

Apparently, Aurelia was the answer to her question of what happened now. The older girl and S.W.A.G. Club founder seemingly appeared out of nowhere, dropping a slip of paper into Bridget's hand. Well, that had been easy. Turning over the bit of parchment, she cleared her throat before reading the clue aloud for the benefit of the rest of her team. "It says: So you made it to the next clue? A round of applause to your group and you. Where would you pitch up a tent? A hint: place has a green, earthy scent. Look for the flag of blue, it will lead you to your next clue."

This time, the clue only pointed towards a place, not a person, and it wasn't quite so obvious. Where would you pitch a tent? Was that a play on words leading to the Quidditch Pitch? "It could be the Quidditch Pitch, if 'pitch up a tent' is just a phrase containing a related word, and the Pitch is definitely green and earthy..." she trailed off. Why would Katrina include the mention of a tent if it wasn't at all related? Perhaps she was just trying to rhyme, but the lion probably could've found another way to say it.

"Actually, I mean, the Pitch is a possibility, but we can't just ignore the mention of tents. Does anyone know of a place on the Grounds where you'd pitch a tent? Some sort of camp area?" Her eyes dropped to the ground, and while she still looked like she was thinking hard, it was mostly to mask her frustration. She was a second, almost third year and she had literally no clue where you would pitch up a tent. It would be okay, though, she reminded herself. Sure, she wanted to win. Wanted to find these things faster than the other team. But she didn't have to know everything. She had a team to work with. For now, it was enough that she'd gotten them the clue and offered up her thoughts on the current puzzle.

⇺🂡⇻

SAPPHIRE FLUSHED SLIGHTLY AT THE MISCONCEPTION. Her gaze dropped to the floor as she muttered something about that making sense, not meeting anyone's eyes. It was an old habit she'd developed while living with her adoptive sisters, which hadn't faded even though it'd been almost a year since her last interaction with them. She would always shy away whenever she was proved wrong.

She agreed with the idea of the outdoor club grounds. It made sense. The redness that had tinged her ears faded away as her embarrassment faded away, though she was still mentally scolding herself for jumping to conclusions about the language thing.

She didn't know whether to apologize for jumping to conclusions, but she would, as force of habit. "I apologize for jumping to conclusions and assuming that I was the one referred to in the clue, when I'd already been featured in the first one." Her voice was still quiet, but not quite a whisper. Only a little louder than that. She still wouldn't look up from the ground, even though her embarrassment had already faded.

Then she started heading towards the club area after Arianna, golden token she'd found before clenched in her hand. Her bright blue eyes were dull at the moment, somehow expecting some sort of spiritual scolding or punishment. She would've slapped herself to snap herself out of it, but then she would probably look crazy, so she refrained from doing so. Instead, she just followed the path in the direction that she was heading. Next time, maybe wait a second before embarrassing yourself, she thought, in the harsh, stinging voice that often scolded her.

⇺🂡⇻

After Bridget was given a slip of paper from Aurelia, the third year would look after the disappearing girl for a second, before he forced his attention on Bridget who was now holding what appeared to be the next clue. "Pitch up a tent?" he wondered out loudly after Bridget had read it out loud and would hum. After her suggestion of it referring to the Quidditch pitch he would glance in the direction of where the pitch would be located. But he could not find a reason as to why someone would pitch up a tent on the Quidditch Pitch, if they would pitch up a tent then they would go to the... His eyes widened at the realization that perhaps not everyone knew that there was a camp at Hogwarts the previous year. "Have you guys heard about th-the Hogwarts Camp Grounds before? Th-They are not t-too far from here just a bit further down the path," he would let his team know as he gestured towards the place. If they would reach it they would find abandoned huts and what appeared to be a burned out fireplace or what was left of it after a year. "Want to give that a t-try?"

If his team decides to go to the Camp Grounds, Alan would follow and go with them, pointing out where they had to go, while keeping watch for a blue flag.

Interacting with @Alan Vanes, @Autumn Ivy, @Bridget Collins
───── ⋆★⋆ ─────
Team Blue

So... Bridget, Autumn, Alan, and May. Mars ran the names through their mind again, committing their faces to memory. It was probably a good thing to remember people, especially if they were planning on being a team.

"Me?" they laughed slightly, brushing a few red locks out of their face, "No, no... let's just say that a troll probably has more artistic talent than me and leave it there." They smiled at the girl. It wasn't that they were necessarily horrible at visual arts... it was just that one should never bet anything on their drawing capabilities. Especially not if they intended on winning this thing.

"I'm glad you can though," they told Autumn, "Seems like someone'll have too."

They continued along the path to the lake, not really looking at much. It was pure coincidence then, when they noticed the glint of gold nestled between the branches of a tree. They looked back over to Autumn and then gestured for her to join the others.

"Go on, I'll catch up," they called, jogging over to the tree. Reaching for the thing, they brought it down to inspect it carefully. A little gold token, light like it was made of cardboard, stared them back in the face. Pursing their lips, Mars slipped it into a back pocket. Probably nothing important, but it seemed so out of place that it was probably good that they bring it along.

After running for a bit, they finally caught up with their group by the side of the lake. They watched as Bridget slipped a blue scrap of fabric into her pocket and then settle down to sketch something on a stone. Alan watched over her; he had mumbled something before about not being able to draw and Mars could only second his sentiments. Visual arts were hard.

It made enough sense that Bridget be the one to do this; apparently she'd listed in her application that sketching was one of her skills, so it was certainly viable to think Katrina had designed this for her. Mars frowned a little though; if Bridget was the one meant to do this, what was Autumn's purpose?

However, quickly enough, they were startled from their thoughts by the appearance of a tall Gryffindor girl who looked over Bridget's sketch and, with a seemingly approving nod, dropped the next clue into her hand.

Pitch a ten, hmm? They listened over Bridget's explanation briefly, mind still whirring through the possibilities. The Quidditch Pitch... maybe not quite. They had a different location in mind anyway. But before they could say it, Alan spoke up. They sighed, speaking up after he'd finished.

"Well, before Alan so wonderfully stole my thunder, I was going to say the same. The Campgrounds seem like the best place to pitch a tent," they mentioned. Mars grinned jokingly at the boy, hoping he didn't take any offense.

They turned to look through the distance in the direction of the Campgrounds.

"If only it weren't so far," the wix mused. Shaking it off, they started down the path, "Welp, let's not waste any time. The faster we get there, the greater our chances of winning."

Turning midstep to address the entire group, they asked,

"Did any of you list skills relating to tents or do you think the next task will be waiting there?"

─────────────────── ROUND 3!──────────────────────────

────────────────────────── Team Blue: @May Moonstar @Mars T'ien @Bridget Collins @Autumn Ivy @Alan Vanes Team Red: @Ariana Walker @Adonis Thorn @Taylor Natalie Rogers-Freeman @Sapphire Riddle @ Evelynn Decipio Next Modding: As soon as everyone posts ──────────────────

Team Red
This round was a bit more chaotic for the Red Team. It took everything in Katrina to stay unnoticed by the group. She wanted to help clarify, but she wouldn't be able to really do that without messing up the fun of the hunt. There would be plenty more for everyone to do later. Besides, little hiccups always happened no matter how prepared you are.

Evelynn was the first to approach the chest, she was also the first to see the small slip of paper in the bottom of the comically large container. She struggled with pronouncing the clue, quickly deducting that this one wasn't for her. However, Sapphire was able to quickly decipher it. The clue wasn't necessarily meant for her, but Katrina knew better than to intervene, she would simply have to stay hidden and hope they could work things out.

Ariana was happy to find that the clue was Spanish as that was a language she was fluent in. Then came the awkward hiccup. That was supposed to be her clue. Katrina slipped behind a tree willing everything to work out. Indeed it did work out, Ariana was able to correctly decipher the clue and lead her team in the direction of their next puzzle. The team ran as quickly as they could, hopefully quicker than the other team.

When they reached the Club area, they would find a red flag pretty quickly. There were a few Gobstones around, four to be exact. And on them, Evelynn would notice something with her surprisingly keen eye.

Team Blue
With Bridget's amazing art, came the Blue Team's chance to get ahead of the Red Team. Everyone could feel the apprehension growing. One clue down and who knows how many left to go. Bridget read the clue to their next spot out loud, puzzled with the answer.

Alan came to the rescue with the mention of the campgrounds just down the path. As they started off, Mars pitched the idea of if anyone had camping related skills. A great idea to get to know one another, who knows how much that could help. However, the team went at a significantly slower pace than the sprinting other group.

But the time the Blue Team reached the Campgrounds, they would be able to see the Red team closing in on their next clue. Tensions were mounting, that much was clear. Now they needed to find the next clue.

It was pretty easy, there was a rather large blue rope hanging from two tall trees about six feet up and a thinner, harder to see rope above that. Now what was that? There was also a sturdy ladder reaching up on one tree and a wooden platform on the other. It looked like the wooden platform would keep anyone from climbing up that three. Someone would have to climb up the ladder, walk across the slackline, and grab the paper that could be seen on the opposite tree.

Only one of the members of their team had acrobatic skills.

Hidden Clues
Even though there hadn't been many coins found in the past few minutes, the amount of time traveled and the distance traveled resulted in two more hidden clues.

May would find a golden glint in the grass along the path. This one may not have seemed as well hidden. But there would be a small plant covering the majority of it. Just like the rest of the golden tokens that had been found, this one was light, spraypainted gold and would fit in the center of her hand. The thought should cross her mind to keep this quiet.

Autumn would also find a token. However, this one would be far harder to spot. Hidden at the base of a nearby tree at this clue would be a slip of bark carefully hiding her golden token. The sun would hit it just right and flash it's hiding spot to the girl.

There were many more tokens to come.

Team Blue Clue: Reducio A clue you only know OOC is that May has acrobatic skills... also, the slackline is much safer than it seems.

How does this work? Reducio OOC Info Rolls= May: 18 | Mars: 6 | Bridget: 1 | Autumn: 18 | Alan: 10 | Ariana: 10 | Adonis: 15 | Sapphire: 3 | Evelynn: 6

Team Red Clue: Reducio Evelynn should check her owls!

Evidently, there wasn't anyone that minded enough to interfere with the progression for the Red Team soon found their way to the Outdoor Club Area. Having sprinted at full effort, Evelynn was red-faced and breathing heavily by the time she arrived. Did that make her less than presentable? Perhaps. Was it a little childish to be racing against the rest in her own personal contest that noone else had agreed to? Oh, most definitely. With Quidditch having been finished for the season, however, and the martial arts club yet to really take off for her, and examinations forcing her to hole up even more than usual to study, she had been experiencing a significant lapse in physical exertion; and with the slumber party and return to home on the horizon, she had an overflowing amount of nerves and energy to dispense of.

First to arrive on scene, she swiped up the flag mid stride before skid-hopping to a stop and spinning about to face the rest of her team closing in. "It appears we were right," she smiled, cheeks ablaze with excitement. Holding this second one out in her opposite hand as the other, she waved it before her, asking, "Who wants to hold onto this one?" Whoever would take up the mantle to relieve her of this flag would find it released to them without question.

It was strange though. At the last clue destination, there had been a large chest. Not only that, but also the flute and the paper clue in addition to the flag she now carried. But here... Even before the flag had been taken from her, Evelynn had begun panning her gaze about in search of... anything, really. There hadn't even been any more of those gold coins on the way here, and if there were no obvious clues, then how were they supposed to know what to do next? When the flag was gone, however, that left her free to invest her attention fully into the search. There had to be something here, surely..

And then she spotted them. Not too far off, there were a handful of abandoned spheres. Gobstones, by the looks of them. Which was odd, given that a scan of the area indicated that there were no games in progress nearby, and noone who appeared to be in search of wayward marbles. With a tilt of her head, she jogged over to them, crouching to take a better look. Not quite sure how the game of Gobstones worked and only knowing that they could spray ink at people, Evelynn regarded them with cautious disdain. She was in no mood to accidentally provoke a staining attack. Instead, she moved her head about to inspect them each from various angles such that no contact with them would have to be made. What she noticed immediately was that each of the four of them bore a letter.

"I believe I've found something," Evelynn announced, rising calmly to look back over her shoulder to the rest of her team again. "There are gobstones over here, and I think they may be our next clue. They have letters written on them: O, C, C, and M. What do you think that might mean?"

Already she had been racking her brain trying to think of how they might decipher that particular clue. She concluded that it had to be an acronym of some sort, but as she was only a first year with limited exposure to some of the classes at the school, nothing immediately came to mind. But hopefully someone else in the group might be able to think of something. Meanwhile, as she waited for the others' insight, she began mentally cycling through the various areas and buildings on the grounds in an attempt to see if there might be any sort of correlation that could be identified.

Action: Idly glancing about her immediate area while trying to think what O C C M could mean and asking her team for help in deciphering it

[font=century gothic]INTERACTING WITH @Ariana Walker, @Adonis Thorn, @Sapphire Riddle and @Taylor Natalie Rogers-Freeman[/font]

UPON ARRIVING AT THE OUTDOOR CLUB AREAS, the pale-haired girl opted to just stand to the side. She didn't intend to take the flag. She just stood to the side, watching Evelynn. She followed quietly after the other girl, cat-quiet footsteps making no noise against the floor. She was always afraid of surprising someone by creeping up on them, but she forgot that in the rush of the scavenger hunt.

She watched over the redheaded girl, looking at the letters on the gobstones that the girl had pointed out. She thought over the letters. O C C M... If you rearrange the letters, it's C O M C, which is the acronym for Care of Magical Creatures... Does that mean anything? Maybe, she thought. She ran her tongue over her teeth as her thoughts ran on her own.

"It could be rearranged to spell CoMC, the acronym for Care of Magical Creatures..." she said aloud, loud enough for the members of her team to hear. "That's also one of the locations we can go to, isn't it? What if we tried going there?" Her voice was quiet still, barely a whisper. She wasn't really comfortable with these people yet, since she barely knew them.

She looked towards the others, eyes gleaming in very faint excitement. "Are there any other ideas?" she questioned. If she got no rejections, she would go in that direction, but she waited for any answers first. She didn't want to make a wild assumption like she had the last time, but she was fairly certain on this one. She also couldn't think of anywhere else that they could go. The Great Lake was her second thought, but that would be a bit of a stretch.

She could only hope that her guess was right.

Action: Going towards CoMC if no rejections are made. Otherwise, going wherever others decide if they shoot down her thoughts on it.

-RED TEAM-

Ariana arrived right behind Evelynn, her cheeks a little flushed, but nevertheless she felt relatively fresh post the sudden burst of physical exercise.

Her Quidditch co-captain was swift in snatching the flag from its position, holding it out in a request for someone to keep a hold of it. “I'll take it.” Ariana offered, stepping forward and grasping a hold of the red streamer. The young beater's eyes strayed in the direction of the gobstones and resorted to follow Eve as the girl stopped to examine them.

“O, C, C, and M. What do you think that might mean?"

Ariana immediately recognised this as an anagram, her mind was slightly sharper than it had been before. The puzzle offered quite a simple term in the fact that it contained few and repeated letters. “I can only think it must be an anagram, so I guess the word is relatively simple; it has few letters within it.” She was thinking of a full word though, and so she didn’t immediately recognise that the it was in fact an acronym for further relations. However a moment passed and something clicked inside of her; could it be Care of magical creatures? COMC?...that seems to work? Doesn’t it? She didn’t voice this thought aloud at first however, still intent on reaching other various possibilities. It seemed that another girl was certain of the answer though, and as she spoke up Ariana turned to focus on what she was saying.

The gryffindor smiled at her in acceptance, “I think you are correct,” she mused, frowning slightly in concentration. She paused her thoughts again, listening carefully to the slytherin girl, [Ariana didn’t yet know her name] who’s voice was now barely a whisper, as though she was hesitant of putting forward her idea.

"That's also one of the locations we can go to, isn't it? What if we tried going there?"

“¡Excelente!” The gryffindor exclaimed in spanish, beaming as she gave the girl a friendly clap on the back. “Did you hear that everyone? Great ideas have been said over here!” she gestured cheerfully with her thumb to Sapphire, “Any objections? Welp then, let’s go to Care of Magical creatures.” she swivelled on her heel and turned towards their next destination.

|| Open to Interaction || - interacting with his team - Active Ability: Calming Presence (Team)

Alan looked at the new obstacle before he looked over to Tiger and then his team. He remembered that he put athletic onto his sheet so perhaps this could include those obstacles? Nothing of it seemed all too difficult at least and Alan was sure it was doable for him if no one else wanted to go ahead and give it a try. "So does anyone want t-to give it a t-try? I could, if no one is against it-" he offered with a curious hesitance. He was not all too sure if someone else was going to do this or if someone had put something like this into their application for this club. Either way, Alan was willing to go ahead and give it a go. He just knew a few of the students in this group and not all too well, so he did not actually know their skill sets and whether they were more suitable for this task than he would be, even though he obviously could go ahead and do it if he wanted to. It just would not look as spectacular as when someone who knew acrobatics did it.

If no one else wants to give it a try, aka no one posts before the deadline...
The following only happens in case May does not reply in time!

Alan would give a solemn nod, his eyes fixating the obstacles and the goal of reaching the piece of paper that could be found at the last bit of the obstacle run. Well not a run, really, as it had to do with balance and stuff, but without paying it much attention he would walk over and climb up the ladder. Luckily the kid was not afraid of heights and quite good at stuff like this. Quickly he found his way up into the tree and took hold of the thinner rope above, before stepping on the slack line. At first he would test how much it would yield if he applied pressure to it, but it seemed fairly solid and in place so slowly and carefully he would make his way over to the other side of the slack line, tucking his lower lip between his teeth in concentration and focus as he made his way over with a frown on his face. The thin rope lightly burned his fingers whenever he needed to catch or balance himself in the air but in the end he made it safely across the obstacle and jumped onto the safety platform. Once he made it, he would take the piece of paper and unfold it curiously.

Interacting with the Blue Team

Bridget was glad when Alan and Mars pointed out the clue was more likely to be referring to the Campgrounds. It made much more sense, although it wasn't something she would've thought of on her own--she had a vague recollection of there being such a place on the Grounds but couldn't profess to have ever been there.

She followed Alan as he lead towards the Campgrounds, spotting the rope and ladder instantly. Her eyes widened a bit; they were supposed to cross that? It was such a thin rope! Well, she wouldn't have to, anyways, something she voiced to her team. "I definitely did not put anything remotely related to this on my application."

Writing this as Alan doing this one as May hasn't posted, but would be in relation to her if she does.

Looking on in concern, biting down hard on her lower lip, she wondered how this could possibly be safe. She couldn't imagine Katrina setting up anything unsafe, though, especially since she doubted she'd be allowed to keep her club if someone got hurt. Unless her friend had secret acrobatic training, she didn't really see how she could've tested the rope's integrity.

To make herself feel a little less nervous, she drew her wand, holding it at the ready. If Alan fell, maybe she'd be able to cast the Levitation Charm fast enough and stop his fall. The third year Gryffindor seemed nice enough, at least not deserving of an impact with the ground like that, and she certainly wouldn't want Katrina's club to be shut down. The fingers of her non-dominant right hand crossed behind her back, she watched on, hoping that rope was much, much safer than it looked.

Action | Not that it's going to happen, but will cast Wingardium Leviosa on Alan if he falls