#msaa students

His name is Kurt. 

The boy who is always soaked to the bone. While he didn’t give me his name himself, his older brother, Lucas [the one who wears the welding gloves everywhere] happily gave it to me.

Kurt has no friends by choice. Anyone who approaches him is immediately met with a paragraph long verbal lashing. 

No one could enter Building 17 today. While it wasn't exactly because of the overgrown vines wrapping around the entire property, growing denser and knotting at any entrance, especially the door, they certainly helped.

My peers weren't exactly....affected by the blockage. They saw it as an opportunity to mess with their phones and have a break; two couples even decided to have a picnic right then and there.

Meiriam, of course, went to grab her father, Principal Lee Anders, who proceeded to do a particularly....intricate ritual that required dancing around the building, swallowing a stick of butter whole, and stabbing a statue made of some kind of melon with a firepoker.

The vines choking Building 17 blackened, but did not wilt. Apparently, this was not the intended effect, since Principal Lee Anders frowned, crossed his arms, and said "The woods rot serves to the feeding of his growth." Whatever that meant.

No one except me seemed to pay much attention to Principal Lee Anders as he tried to free the building several different ways, which includes: using wichfyre to burn the vines away [it didn't], talking to the vines using the language of flowers [from what I gathered, the flowers grown by the vines in response essentially said "fuck off"], and simply hacking at the vines with the firepoker.

There were ten minutes left in class when Principal Lee Anders decided to call for outside help.

I didn't expect my neighbor Prudence to show up, trying to ride her bike in her vestments; as an Oracle, the priestesses who followed the Goddess Aliurian, her garments were highly impractical. The vestments were designed to show off as much skin as possible, to display the jagged tree like scars that all Oracles had to bear.

Prudence approached the vines and pressed her palm against them, letting her eyes drift close. She stayed like that while my peers began to wander off, some moving on to their next class, while some outright skipped, using Principal Lee Anders attention to the blockage to leave without his notice. My next class still im Building 17, so I had to stay while the next group of students approached and were faced with the same problem as the previous period.

Prudence pulled away from the vines with a worried look, and pulled Principal Lee Anders aside to talk. They would occasionally point at me, which just made me hug myself and try to seem smaller than I already was. If they thought I had something to do with this catastrophe, they would be sorely mistaken; I still wasn't allowed to do the practical labs in any of the thaumaturgy classes.

Principal Lee Anders approached me with his hands behind his back, and Prudence followed, fidgeting with her mossy hair. They pulled me to the side, away from the other students.

"Story," Prudence began, wringing her hands. "We, uhm..."

Principal Lee Anders interjected. "We need your help, son."

"With....the vines?" They nodded. "I don't see how I can help..."

"It's not you, per se..."

"Your blood, Mr. Page. We need your blood."

Micah Prince invited Julia to a party at Rock Coast, the beach characterized by broken stones and ship sinker boulders that was a popular swimming spot for the MSAA students. Feeling that I needed to expand my social circle, Julia...strongly suggested that I should come with. 

She also said that I had to bring grilled chicken. That was non-negotiable. 

When we arrived, the Coast was buzzing. A virtue of being popular Micah Prince, I suppose. Old faces and new mingled, some of them friendly. A few of them were posturing while slightly cutting into their ego. Some were playing games, throwing around a ball or skipping stones into the water. There was a circle around a pentagram made of rope that held a snake eye trapped in amber in the center; and the circle was chanting around it. Julia pulled me away from them before I could question it.

Micah was talking to Sara and Kurt when we arrived, and waved at us to acknowledge our arrival. Sara smiled at Julia, but then glossed over me and went back to the Prince. Kurt, however, purposely caught my eye, and gave me the glares to end all glares. The boy who was already soaking wet had complete hatred and malice in his eyes. Readers, I definitely shrunk into myself. The look was only broken when Lucas threw a chunk of chicken at him, and Kurt broke away from his conversation to give his brother a verbal lashing.

Lucas carrying chicken brought my attention to the only constant among the gathering: everyone had grilled chicken. In a bag or a bucket, or a plastic case or a plate, the scent of chicken filled the air. 

Micah clapped his hands to get everyone’s attentions. “Is everyone ready to dive in?” He was met by a raucous response. Micah did that smirk that meant something was about to go down, and opened his container. “Let’s give the mermaids what they want!” 

I paused for a bit, but everyone else grabbed their chicken by the handful and threw them into the black water. Julia elbowed me. “Come on. They won’t let you swim unless you give them an offering.”

My curiosity got the better of me. I lifted my own plastic bag and removed the chicken, chucking it with everyone else. 

A few seconds of silence was all there was. Then bubbles rose to the surface, growing into frothing. Then....the creatures. 

Grey scaled beasts with shark like tails emerged from the depths, their razor teeth tearing into the feast we gave them. Some arced like dolphins to grab at the chunks while others clawed at the scraps. When Julia saw my awed...slack jawed face, she leaned in. “They’re the Rock Coast Mermaids. They’re cool if you feed them...unlike the other Mermaids.” 

I gave her an incredulous look.