Elf King Bind: Main Thread

The town of Arborlen...

The main high school Allensby High was in its usually upbeat and positive mood as the students got ready for school on Monday, after a weekend that for some of them seemed longer and more event-filled than what others had experienced. Even though it was a normal two day weekend, for seven of the students life had changed in a major way, and with potential consequences down the line more far-reaching than anything they had ever experienced.

A dream that imparted a vision of a world in peril, and now, these seven were to fight for a better future. And at the same time, they were warned that agents of "destruction" were spreading, an infection that had boiled beneath the surface before now emerging to make itself known.

For most of the students however they knew nothing of what was to come.

In the west side of the school, the students in the anime club were as usual meeting up there first and foremost in the fifteen minutes before class, in order to meet up, exchange any new information, and for Phineas, to talk about whatever new gadgets he had developed. His braggadocio as usual centered around some new machine shaped like a pig that was designed to help make their lives easier. In this case it was "Finances Pig Mk III", which was designed to safeguard money, with a twenty five cent "deposit and withdrawal fee" one had to pay to Phineas to use his machine.

"We now have our own bank! Thanks to science! My Finances Pig will be the answer to all of our lunch money woes."

Outside the anime club, a gang of five students walked by, composed of a short and fat blond teen who named himself C-Dawg (actual name Charles), a tall and skinny buzz cut "skinhead" named AJ, a pair of twin girls with brown hair styled in a ponytail named Amanda and Lucile, and the leader, of course, the unruly Xander Milocic.

Xander as usual had terrible nightmares, and so had hardly slept, concealing the rings under his eyes among other things with his sunglasses, trying to stand straight but ending up looking a little limp in the process. He breathed a long sigh, looking out through a mirror in the hallway. It looked like this was going to be another cloudy day, but then that was normal by now. What wasn't so normal to him was the sensation he got from among the clouds.

Almost a sense of...familiarity.

Each of the seven found themselves leaving the house for school, their parents bidding them goodbye until the end of the school day, and heading down the road toward the high school.

Yet as they walked, it would become obvious that many of the stop signs usually present were gone from the streets, in some cases resulting in some chaotic driving going on.

Past some of the more heavily forested area, what looked like a small village or compound awoke to the light of day. Yet most people in this place, composed of tents, rudimentary shacks, and a singular big top tent, did not say anything to one another upon awakening or seeing one another. Instead, they smiled widely and whispered in one another's ear, "A lovely silent morning to you, friend." This was their greeting.

Each building was made of painted blue material, with the tents made of one singular shade of blue with no color variation allowed. The big top tent was the same, some members of this odd little commune going about and cleaning off some of their living spaces so as to preserve the quiet and "joyful" blue coloration.

As the people in this odd little testament to man's desire for belonging started their daily business, some of them went about sweeping errant leaves and other material out of the common walkways, so as to minimalize noise. This was how the followers of the "Noiseless God" lived their lives,

Disturbance was not allowed, only happiness and silence, no matter what the circumstances.

Road to high school

As usual, Victor was walking alone. Normally he would have been driving, but the car was at the shop because some punk kid broke the rear window. He wore shorts that day, and the jacket wasn't doing a very good job of keeping the cold out. Although was near the end of winter, and warming up, Victor didn't care. He couldn't stand the cold either way.

But this time, he strangely didn't seem to notice. His mind was on something else.

"Man, I've been having some weird dreams lately. I should probably stop playing RPGs before bed."

But when made his way to the crosswalk at a quiet intersection, he noticed something peculiar that set his mind straight. The stop sign was gone. In fact, they all were.

"What in tarnation happened here?" Said Victor, as he scratched his head. "Eh. Probably just bad drivers." He shrugged his shoulders and continued on his way.

edited 18th Jan '17 4:39:05 PM by Killfuch_Soulschitter

Mile was in the hallway, and seemed to be minding his own business. He had a lot on his mind. He had had strange dreams the previous night. That was normal, because it always happened when he ate pizza right before bed. But when he woke up, he'd found himself with strange powers. Ever since, he'd been experimenting with them. Mostly using them to mess with people. But now, he was just leaning next to his locker, reading his manga. But as Xander and his crew walked by, the blond looked up from his book with his jade green eyes. Smiling very slightly, behind the book, he crooked his index finger. Across the hall, at ankle height, a thin blue thread tightened, now at prime height for tripping and almost completely invisible.

Phoebe looked around as she biked towards the school. Huh, here too... she thought, looking at the crossroads. The stop sign here had gone, just like the two that she'd passed on her way here. She paused, then climbed off her bike and crouched down at where the sign had been. There wasn't even any metal left in the ground. Well, the police probably already knew about it, so it was hardly her concern.

Of course, Mom'll probably complain about the town council's budget now, she thought absentmindedly. Oh well. It'll make a break from them complaining about that cult. She hopped off her bike, locking it in place at the school. As she walked in, she rolled her eyes. And there was baby edgelord, with the - well, it wasn't even as though they could be called the dregs of the school. The phrase lacked scope. Still, it worked well enough for a clutch of white kids who wanted to be the most hardcore thing since Kylo Ren.

edited 18th Jan '17 5:15:14 PM by KarrinBlue

Victor had quietly come through the doors of the school. He glanced aside and saw Xander and his pals, but he cared not for their affairs. There was still time before class, so it was time for dank memes. He was glued to his smartphone, (which was obviously the cause of his forward-leaning neck) browsing Reddit. He even chuckled occasionally.

edited 18th Jan '17 5:30:14 PM by Killfuch_Soulschitter

Oh, jesus christ, some dumbass thought it'd be funny to tear out all the stop signs. Probably had a camera hidden as it was, after all, Just A Prank Bro. Ella's shuffle had Death Grips blasting as she arrived at the school, putting her in the perfect frame of mind to stare at the edgelords from where she was outside. The kids had no sense of design, with clothes obviously fucked up by hand. Ella decided to deck herself out in an old school letterman jacket of hers and some jeans, nice conservative colors that nonetheless highlighted that she was a Jock. Which of course made the supposed transgression even worse or whatever when she popped her earbuds out and papped fellow theater goon Phoebe on the shoulder. "Morning, Feebs. Sup?"

edited 18th Jan '17 7:09:27 PM by Taco

Phoebe flapped her hand in Ella's direction. "Don't touch me, it's too early in the morning." She rolled her shoulders. "Things are fine. Did set strike at the old theatre." She frowned. "You?"

Ella held her hands up. "Right, sorry. Uh, anyway, went to the store, got some new shoes and a new football. Played the new Call of Duty too, actually, real solid, takes some of the jumpy shit from Titanfall but takes out the mechs and the crazier gadgets." She shrugged. "Did the readings for today too, they were okay I guess. Class's gonna suck today, I didn't sleep for shit last night."

Phoebe blinked. "Huh, you too? I mean I was up finishing work and then I had some crazy dream. Weirdest thing, like badly translated seinen. And I haven't watched anything like that since last break." She yawned. "Ugh. I'm starting on the set work today. I need way more coffee before I start using circular saws."

Xander's crew kept walking...right into the string trap set to trip someone up - and so it happened that Xander fell down while walking at the front of his little gang. As he fell, his sunglasses slipped from his face, and the lack of sleep resulted in the young man falling over himself more severely than he would have otherwise.

As he stood up he quickly realized his sunglasses were off, and his gang visibly winced and looked away from him.

Outside, just beyond a window, a bird was settling in as Xander turned toward it...

Trying to cover up his eyes, Xander felt around for his sunglasses. As he did so, the entire hallway and connected rooms became about ten degrees Fahrenheit colder.

...the bird outside fell off the branch it was perched on, its heart exploded in its chest.

Suddenly there was a sound remarkably either like a student coming over, or like a pig waddling toward someone - in other words, Phineas came running out as soon as he heard the sounds coming from out there.

He grabbed up the sunglasses and promptly returned them to Xander in a display of bravery uncommon to him. Xander quickly took the glasses back and put them back on. Apparently Phineas saw something, quivering a little but otherwise looking like he hadn't really been bothered doing that.

The young gang leader seemed to look at Phineas, shocked visibly but also looking a little...impressed. There was a brief moment where put upon nerd and edgelord seemed to connect in some way.

His followers stopped their wincing, and Lucile promptly showed what a grateful person she was by grabbing Phineas by the ear, "You little piggie! Where do you get off handling Xander's glasses!? He made those himself - you could've damaged em."

Phineas visibly flinched backward trying to escape Lucile, but she kept going after him, pinching tighter, "Whine ya little porker!"

Phoebe gritted her teeth and rubbed her shoulders. "Oh good lord, the circus is in town. With guest appearance by the scam artist. You think Kylo Ren there pays them to pretend that he's Medusa with worse hair?"

edited 18th Jan '17 8:09:07 PM by KarrinBlue

"Let's find out. Cover your ears, maybe." Ella said, and cracked her knuckles. The Dream Shit was forgotten for now, but "bad seinen" was up there with her own judgment, "Edgy Earthbound, And Not In the Good Way Like LISA Or The Halloween Hack." It was worth investigating when there weren't shitlords directly in front of them. Raising her voice above the volume for her one on one with Phoebe, she declared, "Hey, Kylo, you tryna pretend to be Medusa with worse hair or something? Or is this more a post-apoc kinda getup? If you want the tears in your clothes to look less deliberate than they clearly are maybe me and the costume department can teach you or something."

Xander however ignored what Ella said and concentrated on the scene playing out, namely, Lucile winding up to punch Phineas in the face. "Lucile. Off. Leave Phineas alone. He did me a solid, and I'm not gonna repay that with bullying."

His tone was authoritative and had no room for any sort of argument.

Lucile immediately withdrew her hands from Phineas, looking a little shocked that Xander 1) took such a stand for the likes of "piggy" and 2) that he would talk to her like that.

"...Yes, Xander, I'm...sorry." She immediately went back to standing with her twin.

Phineas immediately prostrated himself before Xander dramatically, clasping his hands and gesticulating as he spoke, "T-Thank you, Xander-sama! I'll always remember this, Xander-sama! If you ever need anything..."

With that, and thoroughly done pushing his luck, Phineas ran off to class, deciding this was more danger than he was comfortable putting himself in.

Xander then looked over at Ella, after having basically let her words hang in the air, and shook his head, "Whatever, girly." He then looked at his gang and said, "Lets go. We're skipping today." As he left he seemed to take one more look up and out toward the clouds for some reason.

One of Phineas' anime club "friends" said, visibly disgusted and looking out at the events ensuing, "That was the most elaborate way I've ever seen him kiss an ass..."

Phoebe removed her hands from her ears. "...why did he even come to school today, did he get up at 7:30 for fun or... ugh, who cares."

"I'm gonna fuckin'—I'm gonna—" Ella fumed for a second, bouncing from foot to foot. "Shit list, motherfucker. He's dead. Gonna dunk his ass." But also, it wasn't worth an assault. "No forgiveness, but also, not gonna get arrested." Ella clenched her fist, closed her eyes, and stepped back. "Um, um, Feebs, you said something about seinen? I don't read much manga" of course pronounced like sane-in and mango, "but that's shit like, uh, like Jojo's in one of those mags now right?"

Miles watched as Xander fell, causing the sunglasses to fall off. He knew it was petty, but he figured that if he was gonna mess with someone in pursuit of testing out his new powers, he wanted it to be an asshat. But it backfired when Phineas went and tried to help Xander. He knew Phineas, and while he considered him annoying/competition, he didn't dislike the dude. They were in anime club together. He was about to go lay into Elisa, despite the fact that he was shorter than everyone else in Xander's gang, when Xander told her to shove off. Huh. He went back to his manga, though he'd heard the con artist thing from Phoebe.

"Whateeevs. He said, closing his manga as he watched Phineas run off. "How can you be a con artist if everyone knows not to trust you? Unless you count stealing maiden's hearts." He flicked his finger, and the string disappeared into thin air, hopefully with nobody having seen it. As Xander left, he watched carefully. "Why did he show up if he was gonna skip?"

"Manga's, like, cartoons with guns." He went to anime club, but he didn't pay a lot of attention. He handed Ella his book. It had a picture of a hideous looking android girl with cat ears holding a sword that was bigger than she was.

edited 18th Jan '17 9:20:01 PM by HeroicSociopath

Phoebe glanced at Miles. "...Yeah, sounds right." She looked down. "Goodness. You have the exact taste that I thought you'd have."

"I know, right?" He said, smiling, as if she'd just given him a very high compliment. "It's the whole irony thing. If your taste is bad enough, eventually it becomes good taste. Oh, hey, by the way. Speaking of Star Wars. Did you know..." He looked at her, with those green eyes of his. He had a very intense stare. Not as in it being threatening, or particularly piercing. More just very, very earnest and sincere.◊ Even though he could do it on cue.

"Did you know that I'm a Jedi?" He said.

• To: Hershel
• Sub: The police know about this??
  |IMG: stopsign1.jpg| |IMG: stopsign2.jpg| |IMG: stopsign3.jpg|

Stowing the cell away, Will put on his best "totally hyped to be here, yep" smile and followed the flow of students through into the school building. It was only a few seconds before a friend of a friend jumped on him about the 'shit he'd literally just missed, fuck dude', and from there it was a game of nodding and reacting at the right times until he was able to slip out of the conversation again with a grin and a wave.

Felt bad, as always, but his head wasn't in the right place to care about a pratfall at seven in the morning. He was going crazy, which was worrying after three years of not being crazy. What he really wanted to do was find a quiet corner, maybe a bathroom, and zone out there, but other students were already calling out to him. Willing a budding headache back into dormancy (because he could do that now, because he was crazy) he started making the pre-lesson rounds of "hi"'s and "what's up"'s.

Victor looked up from his memes just in time to see Xander trip, and Phineas help him out. Hearing Phineas say "Sama" made Victor visibly cringe. "Ugh. Weebs"

"You know, I heard there was a church of Jedi like, actually established, so I'll bite, that's cool." Ella leaned over Phoebe's shoulder to look at the manga he passed over. "Oh, Naze anata wa kore o hon'yaku shite iru nodesu ka, yeah. Pretty alright." She pursed her lips appreciatively. "That shit's pretty slick. Didn't know Theater was fulla weebs but there you go."

Half awake and still dreaming, Drake gave a yawn as he finally made it to school. He didn't bother taking his cap off in the building, he was just that worn out. He just kept walking on auto pilot, drool dripping down his chin. He didn't seem too aware of anything until Phineas ran right past him and nearly knocked him over. The shock sure woke up the dread-wearing student, spinning on his heels with a sudden burst of anger, shouted,

"Hey, Porky! Watch where yer runnin'! I'm walkin' here!"

Victor jumped in surprise. He was getting really into a particularly catchy remix of "We Are Number One", and the sudden shout snapped him out of it. All of the light within a 20 foot radius of him suddenly became noticeably darker, from ceiling bulbs to phone screens.

edited 18th Jan '17 10:36:41 PM by Killfuch_Soulschitter

"No." Was all Miles said, shaking his head. "Don't tell anyone. Only 'cause I like ya." He glanced around to make sure nobody was really looking, then held out his hand. He shot a string at Phineas' hat, then tried to steal it. The string was only as thick as fishing line; It would be very difficult to see unless one were really looking for it, especially with Victor's little slip.

"Hey, Drake, bro." He called out the the dreadlocks-wearing student. "Crazy weather, huh?"

edited 18th Jan '17 10:39:43 PM by HeroicSociopath

Phineas abruptly stopped, and slowly turned around, shaking a little, and he promptly apologized...in his usual way, of course. "Gomen Gomen...translated, I'm sorry, really, I am. I'd even let you store your money in the Anime Club's Finances Pig free of charge..."

The fat teenager seemed to be on edge from his earlier confrontation, and yet, he wasn't reduced to cringing quite so much.

Phineas didn't see what suddenly grabbed his hat, and immediately looked around, shocked, and tried to find it.

Meanwhile, with the others, there was a conspicuous sense that something was wrong - a heavy air that seemed to drift like a mist. The conversations of other students walking by seemed to quiet for a time.

That was when another student ran by, looking a little beaten up.

The student immediately talked to a teacher going to her class, saying that stop signs were turning up outside, near the back of the school at the track area where the football and track teams practiced. According to the roughed up looking student, one of his friends tried to approach them and something happened.

Apparently something dropped out of the sky in a grassy hill out there and sent the investigating students flying. And the roughed up student had not seen his friend come back...

edited 18th Jan '17 10:50:55 PM by NickTheSwing