TRUE FALSITY.

The blog is still password protected when you’re allowed back into school. After a week of thorough investigation, students are allowed to pour back into school. The gossip boards have been active nearly every day since the arson attempt -- it’s no longer a board meant to spread rumors, it’s a board teetering between malicious and defensive, no longer built on good intent. 

The halls are noisier than usual, eyeing new security and polished cameras as they wait for their morning class. When you shut your locker, listening to laughter and chatter, there’s something that makes you dig into your pocket. Whether it’s the pocket of your jeans, or a hoodie, or your bag, it makes you dig, and it’s there you see a ripped piece of paper. It’s ripped from a notebook, and in flowery lettering, with hearts dotting i’s, it has a single word on it, followed by numbers.

Before you have time to figure out what it means, the bell for first period rings, and you shove it back into the pocket from where it came from and go to class.

The day goes smoothly, the occasional rumor being passed around, harassment as constant as ever, and when you get to your house - whether it’s from intuition, pure luck, or otherwise - you click onto the original Gossip Alert blog. Keying in the words, the page loads, and for the first time in weeks, you’re allowed access to the infamous blog.

There are new entries and posts, all posted today. None have deciphered text, but screenshots of emails are all the posts contain. Words are blocked out, but you know enough to get the gist of what happened.

FROM: ██████

i know who you are. i know that youre a █████. you didnt think anyone would find out. 

TO: ██████

sorry, who is this?

FROM: ██████

youre acquainted with me. you posted that entire thing on your blog warning everyone about me. you used to live at ██████ ███ █████ ██. you ███ ███ ██ and that’s how you ████. you know youre hurting people, right?

TO: ██████

what do you want from me?

FROM: █████

you did it the first time. help me do it a second time. they never caught you, did they? youre real human scum. you killed some people. including yourself.

TO: █████

it was an accident. you want to do it on purpose.

FROM: ██████

whichever way you try to blame me for it, its not going to work. you care a lot about people, huh? man, if people get sent to the hospital, thats gonna suck.

TO: ██████

what are you saying?

FROM: ██████

i know youre not an idiot. if they get hurt in the ███ that im setting, then thats on them. if you help me out, though... maybe we won’t have another awful incident.

TO: ██████

...if i help you, no one will get hurt in the ███? not even a burn?

FROM: ██████

not a scratch. as long as you just listen to me, everyones gonna be fine. and thats a promise.

TO: ██████

...okay.

The screenshots end there.

EVENT #3 -- CLEARED !!

CLUES FOUND:

- A ripped piece of notebook paper with Sallies0123 written on it.

- Screenshots of an email log between two people.

NOTES:

- You can still talk to Willow via email or text!

You hear about it before you see it.

It’s a normal school day, with chatter about the new gossip blog filling the mornings, greeting new security as you enter. The events of what happened last week are still popular news, as is with popular events. You get to your 3rd period class, filing in with the crowd of students and listening to the teacher drone on about something you’re not interested in.

Then, you hear the familiar ring of a fire alarm.

You have fire drills the start of every month, but this isn’t every month, and this isn’t a fire drill. As everyone rushes out, the teacher accounting for all heads and guiding everyone to the field, you hear murmurs from fellow classmates and students. Mostly theories about what had happened, scared whispers -- nothing confirmed, though. Not yet.

An hour passes, with the fire and police department arriving. A couple kids get held back for questioning, but the rest are allowed to leave. You hang back a little, just to get the full scope of what happened, along with checking social media and eavesdropping on other conversations. 

Apparently, there was a fire in the cafeteria, one that wasn’t set by lunch ladies or grease. It had burned a couple of the tables before the smoke drifted and alerted the fire alarm, to which the sprinklers were set off. The cafeteria was left mostly in tact, luckily, but school was released early for investigation.

When you get home that day, there’s something waiting for you at your doorstep. A dried willow plant, with the stem slightly burnt, presumably from a lighter. 

That night, the gossip boards are as active as ever, comments coming in about who the culprit might be, rumors about investigation, and only a couple comments about dried willow plants, if any. People are providing witness testimonies, but whether they’re true or not, you’re not entirely sure. The entire debacle is one that you’re not sure is linked to Firestarter, Gossip Alert, this new gossip board, or something else entirely.

One thing’s for certain, it’s something you want to be careful about.

EVENT #2: CLEARED !!

CLUES FOUND:

- The cafeteria has been attempted to be burned. No one is injured, thankfully.

NOTES:

- Sev ( @oncesquip​ ) and Ciryke ( @dcfctive​ ) specifically have been speculated to set the fire. Keep in mind that the person who has set the fire is not any of the muses, and is an NPC, but your muse can react accordingly to people pinning the blame on them. 

- You can still talk to Willow via email or text! Feel free to investigate or talk in the boards too.

When you shuffle into the bleak halls of Dove Coast High, everything seems normal. Morning conversations fill the air, students shove bags into decorated lockers, and the amplified, Gossip Alert encouraged harassment is common. For a second, it seems as if Willow’s concern was unfounded.

The bulletin boards spread across the large school, normally filled with club posters and announcements, now are filled with newspaper articles. News articles from this town, news articles from other towns, local papers, printed transcripts of radio talk shows -- the discussion is different, but the topic is the same.

As kids gather around the glass, you manage to squeeze your way in through the crowd to catch even a small glimpse of the papers. The tone differs from piece to piece, with some calling the event crazy, others marking it as a tragedy. It’s something you’ve heard - it’s the main reason why the school doesn’t allow any lighters, or matchboxes, or anything that could result in the same event happening.

“Dove Coast High gymnasium burnt down...” “Who Did It?: The Dove Coast High fire...” “Dove Coast High principal makes a statement to perpetrator...” “4 dead from Dove Coast High fire, 13 injured...”

It’s impossible to attend the high school and not hear about the fire that left the school’s gymnasium a pile of rubble and ash in the 80s. While it was more treated as a “fun fact” by students, a topic of discussion and theories on who set the fire, staff often thought otherwise. All but a couple of teachers from the 80s had retired, and only a few remembered the event as vividly as newspapers would recall.

You hear the shouts of a staff member, accompanied by a teacher who politely tells everyone to get to class. Parting the crowd as it slowly scatters, the staff members unlocks the glass case and tears off the pinned papers, crumpling them. As you head to your locker, you eavesdrop on the conversations around you.

“I bet it’s just some prank...”

“Didn’t that one blog Gossip Alert told us to keep an eye on say something about this in code? It was Base64...”

“What do you think they’ll do about this?”

“Hopefully it’s not serious...”

Putting aside your own theories, you open your locker to retrieve your books.

....Only to see nothing but your books. Pictures of friends you may have put up have turned into ash, class schedules have turned into nothing, and the corners of your textbooks have been charred. For the unlucky few, small fires are still burning, but no matter how hard you try and put it out, any and all belongings except school supplies are gone. Looking around, you see this only happened to a select few.

For staff, important documents have been singed. Blackened, but salvageable. Photos of family and friends, however, are not so lucky. There are remnants of the picture, but most of it has been burned off. 

Later, you notice out on the football field that a small circle, around 10 inches long in diameter, has been burned onto the grass. It’s a fairy ring of ash and burned dirt, and it still smells like smoke.

When you come home later that day, Gossip Alert has been set to password protected.

EVENT #1: CLEARED !!

CLUES FOUND:

-Papers and articles about the Dove Coast High fire in the 80s have been plastered on school bulletin boards. By the time you get out of your first class, it’s back to normal.

-Personal belongings of everyone in the verse has been either burnt completely or charred beyond recognition.

-A 10 inch diameter circle is burnt into the football field.

-Gossip Alert has been password protected.

NOTES:

- Interactions with Willow are now restricted to text and email! You can send these through the inbox and preface it just so I know.

- You’re welcome to continue / start new threads prior to this event! As long as it doesn’t mess with anything that happened, you’re good.