Chaos Ensues PV Tagged FINISHED

Mentioning/Interacting With: @Marshal Mozor, @Leonard Oaksworth, @Lindsey Springhall

English: #6B5076
Welsh: #9E8FB9
Uzbek: #874343

That's nice?

That's nice?

Okay, this boy had taken awkwardness to a new level. Autumn almost felt bad. Luckily, or maybe unluckily, the boy was opening his mouth again, and it may have been wishful thinking, but Autumn hoped that whatever came out of his mouth next would redeem the awkward "that's nice".

"I mean, it's not nice, of course. Hell isn't a nice place, from what I know. I've never been there, so I wouldn't really know much, but I go to school here, which is close enough."

Weak beginning, but even Autumn had to admit that the ending had redeemed the entirety of the conversation. "But I go to school here, which is close enough"?

It was the funniest thing she had heard that month. It was basically the only funny thing she had heard that month. Smiling came unnaturally to her, but this? This made her laugh. Not really laugh, but lightly chuckle, which wouldn't have been much, had she been pretty much anybody else. She hoped nobody had heard or seen.

"What I mean to say is, I believe anyone who's able to get out of such a place with barely any scratches is someone brave. Someone who I'd like to know more about."

Lying. He was lying.

Also, he was not doing great with the whole flattery thing. Brave? She was a coward, and well aware. Someone anybody would like to know more about? Pfft. If anything, this was a joke show and he was trying to get her to laugh.

Still, she'd humour him. He was funny, and he could lie to some extent.

What was this leading up to?

"So, if you don't have anything else to do, I would like to get to know you better at the next dance. Well, not exactly dance, you should know I'm terrible at that. But we can steal food together."

A terrible dancer? A terrible shame.

Just kidding. Autumn might have liked to dance sometime, and, okay, fine, maybe she still did, but she certainly was not about to do so in front of people.

Stealing? Amazing idea. Food? Eh, she'd rather not.

And apart from all that, without the part about stealing and dancing, was an invite. An invite to the dance. Huh. So that had been what everything had been leading up to. It was weird, Autumn had thought that Leonard had seemed fairly smart, but asking her to the ball? Not a very "smart person" thing to do. Not a very "sane person" thing to do. Autumn took a moment to comprehend it.

She had just been asked to the ball. She had just been asked to the ball by a person who had lied, suggested stealing as a fun idea and made her laugh in the same conversation.

"And of course my buddy Marshal would be there as well."

Ah. Mikayla. Autumn had forgotten about him for a minute.

It had been a wonderful minute.

"I mean, we'd have to thank the lad that made us meet in the first place, yeah? I'm sure he'd be thrilled to join us. Wouldn't you, Marshal? You can bring any girl you want to. Well, if you manage to get one, that is. Always got to consider the possibilities."

Autumn paused, still comprehending the fact that she had been asked to the ball.

"Of course I'll be there! Ten dragons couldn't keep me away from all that f-AGH-"

Still comprehending. What was she meant to say? Was she meant to say anything?

"I'd definitely stay away from the dance floor with this guy. He never knows where his feet are. In fact, I'm really worried he might step in a hole sooner or later. Watch and see that he doesn't trip, won't you?"

What. Was. She. Meant. To. Say.

"Oh, I'll find myself a date. Don't you worry about that, Leo. I may not be as handsome, brilliant, witty or charming as you, but I think I'll manage."

Not as handsome, brilliant, witty or charming? Huh, maybe he wasn't that stupid and overconfident.

"My goodness! Here Leo is, asking you to come to the dance with... us, and we don't even know your name! Might you grace our ears with it?"

Okay. Okay. She had it. She could speak. She could act like a normal human being.

Once she regained the capability of speech, she spoke to them both.

"No, but I can tell you what it is; Autumn Artemia Ivy. And, unfortunately, I will have to reject the offer. As fun as it all sounds, you are both strangers."

She turned to Leonard.

"And it does sound fun. And you seem interesting, since I am still standing here. But the ball seems like somewhere you'd go with someone you know, not somewhere you go to with a stranger so that they become somebody you know. Maybe, before any other school dance with an almost certain disastrous outcome, we could actually have a conversation not about the upcoming dance and then, maybe, I could consider the offer. Still that is a no for me."

She shrugged apologetically and began moving away. Maybe, as she left, she could see the face of the Hufflepuff blob who she had seen previously.

Mentioning @Leonard Oaksworth @Marshal Mozor @Autumn Ivy

Ughhh okay…everything seemed weird. Oh my. The relationships out there were complicated: Oaksworth trying to ask a random girl in the hallways out, which was definitely very out of character for him; Mozor, on the other hand, urged the previous one to do it, which was very likely; Unknown, being asked out surprisingly, was freaking out and panicking; and finally, Springhall, who thought that she knew the two boys over there well, was actively hiding and trying to overhear their conversations.

How interesting. Yet how terrifying.

She slightly blushed at the thought of overheating the conversations. No. It wasn’t a right thing to do. Lurking out there and quietly capturing every movements and words of the speakers definitely was a question on the moral aspect. But still, on the others hand, honestly speaking, hadn’t she heard something already? Hadn’t she heard the beginning of this embarrassing situation? She blinked. Things were getting weirder.

Calming herself down a bit like what she usually did and succeed in, she observed. Students were coming from every direction. They were talking, laughing, sharing opinions on the upcoming masquerade ball. No one would have noticed her, but…they were too loud for her to hear the conversations over there as well as concealing herself in the corner. (Roll no.1: fail)

Again she blinked. Large chocolate brown eyes gazed, and without any intentions, she slowly approached to them. Still there were numerous students — hadn’t some first year classes started? She blamed them for staying in the corridors for a long time — why couldn’t these young kids go back to their common room or spend the break in the library? She tried hard to hear Marshal’s words — but no. She couldn’t catch his peppy words or even Leonard’s. (Roll no.2: fail)

Her brows knitted. Beautiful face was shrouded by an unhappy cloud. How could…Lindsey had always trusted her listening skills. Her eyes were like the ones of a eagle’s, so did her ears. But they just didn’t work today. How terrible. She leaned closer to them, while concealing herself behind an extra tall Ravenclaw student. Hopefully he wouldn’t suddenly ran off…so that she could conceal herself a little longer. Though still she was some paces from the group for them to notice. To get to Lindsey, they had to walk past a group of Slytherin girls talking, two young Gryffindors laughing, and finally, the tall older Ravenclaw boy who was busy standing there and reading a charms book.

She looked at the attentively. The girl seemed…rather apologetically. And Marshal seemed happy, though that’s before the girl opened her mouth to speak. Leonard, on the other hand, was just like his usual self — not much changed since she last met him in the abandoned toilets, maybe. Her eyes widened, while the girl shrugged.

Shrugging…? What did she mean? To show that she didn’t care his invitation? Or to show that Leonard was far from her choice of a date? Or maybe, to say that she already had a boyfriend to go with? Lindsey didn’t know. But suddenly she realized something. Something extra important. She knew what the shrug mean now. She had successfully guessed it, and her chocolate brown eyes widened. (Roll no.3: success)

Slytherin second year, the one and only Leonard Oaksworth, was rejected.

Reducio

can Lindsey overhear the trio’s words? (WIS DC 15)
[d20 : 7] + 7 = 14 > fail
second attempt: (WIS DC 15)
[d20 : 7] + 7 = 14 > fail
attempt on guessing the words from movements: (WIS DC 20)
[d20 : 13] + 7 = 20 > success XD

Interacting With: @Marshal Mozor, @Autumn Ivy, and at last, @Lindsey Springhall

While regret was a very good acquaintance of Leonard, rejection remained something outside the realms of his experiences with negative words starting with "r". Not entirely, of course. Everyone on the planet Earth had experienced rejection at some time, in some form, and he'd had brushes with being dismissed with words the temperature of the North Pole. Yet, this particular rejection felt...different. It wasn't a school admissions officer who'd deemed his nonexistent public speaking skills below par, it wasn't a grumpy, wrinkled customer insistent on removing chicken from his chicken pie, it was a female stranger who wished to rid herself the responsibility of taking him and an unexpected plus-one to a school dance. And yet, the inevitable declining of his not-quite-generous offer made his spirits go down just that little bit further.

The female stranger's chuckle, light and as probably-a-figment-of-imagination as it was, and the lion's lack of a fight against the crunched foot raised those spirits once more. Then, said lion talking brought it down to the Mariana Trench.

The snake kept a firm bite on his mouth as Marshal effectively buried him alive in attempt to assist, preventing him from repeating his father's Welsh shouts of indignance and curses upon the world that would always echo from the kitchen when something undoubtedly broke down. Forget tripping in a hole, the entire five minutes he'd spent standing and fidgeting and talking about an eternal oven of torture as though it was but an infamous tourist spot was amounting to digging the hole, jumping in it, then digging even further down because the original punishment wasn't sufficient.

"Sure, sure, sure, mate," he mirrored the lion's actions, patting the other boy on the back and trying to leave no hint of sarcasm. Really, he was doing this for Marshal, it would be a terrible type of irony to have their friendship be broken second-handedly by girls. "You'll manage. Definitely won't worry about that."

Shockingly, the next few utterances that came from the blonde made sense. How had he been so distracted, so caught up in the rush of being forced to suddenly become Prince Charming, as to forget asking for the name of his supposed damsel in distress?

Frankly, it was really Marshal who was playing the role of charismatic royalty from a land far away, and he, while not a damsel, being put in a constant state of distress by the dragon of whatever was happening. For then, though, he'd humour the Gryffindor's wishes for the sole purpose of gaining a story to tell at the nursing home and never undergo ever again.

As all good nursing home stories did, his was swiftly cut to an end by a tragic closure. A bitter mixture of relief and sadness as she finally said no, most likely telling more than a few falsehoods along the way.

"Oh. Well, uh, no harm no foul's the saying, innit? We are, by definition, strangers to the highest degree. It is completely fair you wouldn't want to spend hours upon hours of talking to me." He put on a smile, tight and much more transparent than his previous lie. "And I will give you a strong might on that offer, Autumn Artemia Ivy."

With no other acknowledgement than a shrug, she was gone.

He shook himself to reality as the girl's silhouette turned to nothing but a faraway speck. While the entire endeavour was easy to describe as nothing more than a failure, the snake was a scientist, determined to write down the knowledge gained from his brief, terrifying dip in the vast pool of dates. After he sulked in self-pity for a few hours, of course.

Leonard turned to his partner in Cupid crime, stammering as the absolute confusion about how he'd ended up there set in. "I-I'll be going now. Hope you can maybe get a date of your own. If you do feel absolutely zero need to invite me. Zero need, you listening?"

The Slytherin didn't wait for an answer, knowing the truth was that Marshal was neither listening nor paying attention to the `zero` part of his statements. His objective had turned from survival to escape, and so he escaped, quickly bolting away when he saw her. A female not-stranger. A good acquaintance. A friend, even, and most of all someone who had a very big chance to ask him about the encounter later on.

"Out of pure curiosity, how much of that did you hear?" Leonard cleared his throat again, an action that was quickly becoming necessary as his talking cylinder reached the humidity level of a desert. Before the Hufflepuff could produce a singular syllable, he waved a hand in both farewell and dismissal. "You know what, don't want to know, we'll catch up later, Flora."

With a discarded nickname making a comeback in his distress, off he was, a few hours early to his daily brooding minutes and more than a few decades early to mortification.

THREAD ENDED

Carry on the chaos!