Networking ("Valencia")

[Aryck Venn]

Aryck sat by himself in a dimly lit Audio-Visual Room in Hircine High, just after lunch hours. He pondered, somewhat, to himself as to the purpose of these rooms, as they are rarely used in this day and age, thanks to the advent of 'the computer lab', but, like most things in his mind that weren't extremely pertinent, he dismissed it, at least for the moment. Perhaps when the school wasn't in danger of being shut down and/or overrun, he'd consider the topic again.

So the boy sat alone, wondering for how much longer he would stay that way. He did not expect company, per se, at least not that the untrained eye and ear would see. At the assembly, he heard a word used, one that pricked at the edges of his mind. Network. He'd heard the word used a few times through the pipeline, but, as he preferred to almost entirely work alone, had not thought to look deeper into the matter. It was, after all, a rumor, a ghost, something that might not even exist. But in the wake of the preceding events, Aryck questioned the merits of his autonomy.

Despite his own being quite sharp, an extra eye and ear may not hurt after all.

Even so, he didn't want the help of someone who wasn't worth his time. If this "Network" really did exist, and it really was all it was cracked up to be, then and only then would he inquire further. And this, ladies and gentlemen, is what led to his sitting alone in the A/V Room.

The days prior, Aryck had made it a point NOT to ask around about the Network. A man of little words as is, he maintained an even tighter-lipped presence than usual, in fact. What he did do, however, was play off of what he thought he knew about the group. In all of his classes, slipped in his textbooks, were books of puzzles. He would work on cracking them in view of only those who were perceptive. On his lunch breaks and before classes, even he would break out a Nintendo DS and play the game Professor Layton & The Curious Village. The untrained eye would likely not understand, but those who knew, knew the game was entirely about solving puzzles.

It was obvious, but at the same time, not. Aryck's hope was that someone with ties to this Network had seen these actions and picked up on their significance. Then, if the Network really did see and hear all the goings-on at school, surely someone would know about his waiting alone for seemingly no reason.

Aryck simply hoped the most insightful of those within this group would put two and two together, and meet him there.

[Valencia Donahue]

Most students would be attending class immediately after lunch, save for the more mobile of Network members using their creative means to skip class. Of those members are those who don't need to “skip” class per se, like those who have the administration's permission to scour the campus for pictures, interviews, and the latest scoop whenever they wanted; journalists. Now, this is assuming that they actually have something to look for. In the case of two Trackers, they were looking for something to look for and there was no better way to look for some noise than to make some. The door to the A/V opened abruptly, showing the silhouette of a small editor in chief by the name of Annette. By small, we mean 4'10”.

[ANNETTE]: “HA!! I WIN!! I WIN I WIN I WIN I WIN I WIN!!”

She hopped into the dark room and hopped in circles excitedly as her bodyguard Sean caught up and collapsed in the doorway, the obvious loser to what appears to be a race. But what? Annette slammed her excited hand on the lights, a person with sensitive eyesight's worst nightmare, not expecting someone to be found in one of the seats. Her blissful expression shifted into that of an angered pout as she marched over to Aryck, apparently unaware of who he is.

[ANNETTE]: “Hey! You shouldn't be here! I got here first and what you're doing is sitting on prime, bonafide Tracker material! Now get up and scram, freshman!”

This is Annette. This is Annette doing everything she can to take full advantage of her journalistic license, no matter how incorrectly she's using it. Wheezing, her bodyguard crawled into the room and noticed the object of his affections already getting to work, prompting him to scramble up to her side in attempt to make the duo seem more imposing. If anything, Annette looked cute as hell with her disappointed face and Sean looked worried to pieces that Aryck isn't a freshman and had more right to be here than they were.

[Aryck Venn]

The door slammed open, and with an excited shout from a diminutive girl, the light flipped on. Aryck blinked once, twice, and was back to normal, looking up at the girl who had so suddenly came in. His brow furrowed as he remained silent for a few moments, likely confusing Annette and worrying Sean. What he was trying to do, in fact, was to figure out just why she was here. From a glance, she didn't appear at all to have any idea of what was going on, or why Aryck was seated where he was. However, if she WAS with the Network, she would do well not to simply walk in and announce her presence, and perhaps her actions were just another guise, like he himself had put on in the days prior. The double-and-triple-layers of intrigue and mystery began to make his head hurt, and so, still not saying anything, the lanky junior rubbed his forehead thoughtfully.

For now, he decided to just play along, and keep his senses opened for a clue.

"... this chair?"

These would be the only words he would speak for the moment, in a dull, rather uninterested tone. It was his usual voice, though, and one that often caused him to appear as if he did not particularly care for the conversation, despite the fact that choice of words may be the closest Aryck has ever come to being "cute."

He would ignore the freshmen comment, if only for now. As before, it was impertinent. Things would hopefully be straightened out soon enough. If not, then this possible lead was likely not worth his time after all.

[Valencia Donahue]

Annette rolled her eyes, a clear “ugh, freshmen think they're hot stuff” thought crossing her mind to any capable of seeing it plastered on her features.

[ANNETTE]: “Yes, THIS chair! You know, if it was any other chair, I wouldn't be telling you to skedaddle, now would I? See what I'm getting at? Do I have to make you get out of it? You know what, I don't have to take this--”

Sean's face went deathly pale as Annette got onto her knees and pushed the chair up from beneath Aryck. In theaters, have you ever sat far back in your seat enough to be folded up with the chair when you were little? It's kinda like that, except it's pretty awkward seeing a small girl like Annette trying to squish a tall guy like Aryck so she can find who-knows-what beneath his seat. Her bodyguard held up his hands perplexed, unable to think of how to get his boss to stop or how to help her out. Worst of all, Annette decided to tell him how.

[ANNETTE]: “I think I found it! Sean, keep the seat lifted up 'cause I'm goin' in!”

Her bodyguard facepalmed at how strange that sounded and looked at Aryck pleadingly to get off the chair to make this look much less humiliating than it does from another perspective. He glanced at Annette trying to crawl under the chair and back at Aryck.

[ANNETTE]: “You know, I can't fit in here if I do this on my own! Just man up and squish the freshman already so I can get a better look at the message!”

[Aryck Venn]

At Annette's first reactions to the reply, Aryck would only raise his eyebrow. The girl was a stubborn sort, that was for sure. Furthermore, his 'joke' was, apparently, not nearly as much of one as he thought: The girl seriously wanted Aryck's chair.

This alone intrigued the lanky junior enough to want to get up and let her have it. That was, of course, until she tried to take what she wanted for herself.

Aryck suddenly found the girl pushing the underneath of the theater-style chair, either attempting to locate something underneath the cushion or trying to entangle the Pillar between the cushion and the back, if not both. Her small frame and lack of strength, however, made it difficult, and Aryck, too startled to do much else, simply froze, unintentionally allowing himself to become entangled. For a moment, the two struggled, Annette trying to get under the chair, and Aryck trying to get out of it. At a look from the larger student, Aryck finally snapped to his senses, leaning backwards and kicking his legs to perform a neat back-somersault over the back of the seat to land in a crouch behind it.

If Annette looked up at that point, she would see Aryck's spikey head slowly rising from behind the seat. He adjusted his glasses back up onto his nose with his middle finger, and analyzed her coldly. Here were two starkly different individuals facing each other: Aryck's cold and quiet looking down at Annette's loud and bubbly.

"Message...?"

He let the thought trail off, the gist of his question clear to anyone. He began to stroll around the chair, now also curious as to what secrets the underside of the chair held. This day was becoming rapidly more and more silly; a word usually not held very high in Aryck's vocabulary. Regardless, he would wait it out. Good things often came to those who persevered.

And if this 'message' was any indication, he may just have been on the right track after all.

[Valencia Donahue]

Sean released a loud sigh of relief as Aryck got himself out of the chair, allowing Annette to fit in the already small space and Sean to not need to do anything that'll make others question his masculinity. He was about to explain until Annette spoke up instead. That's how it was with the two: Sean was usually too awkward to do much talking and Annette just chattered away.

[ANNETTE]: “Yup, yup, message. Of course I can't expect you to know this right away. This should be a fresh as it can get, so I don't blame you for not noticing it. You need friends of friends of friends with too much free time to find stuff like this... Someone was cleaning this room for service learning hours and while he was trying to get one of the hard-to-reach pieces of gum stuck at a weird angle between two screws, he saw random scratches and here we are! Beating those Predators and Howlers to the punch!”

Well that explained a lot while the girl deciphered away. By the looks of it, she assumed that Aryck already knew what the Network was all about but was a n00b at understanding it... And being the initiative-taking person she is, Annette was willing to show off her Tracker pride. If she wasn't as deep in thought as she could ever get, one would've expected a “RE-PRE-SENT!! BIZZOOOYYY!!” from her. Sean looked on and wanted to show that he wasn't useless, so he stammered out what little information was left over to add.

[SEAN]: “Y-you see, we got this lead this lunch period.”

...And that was all he could say before Annette squeezed her way through to the other side of the chair where Aryck was and looked up at him with a confused look on her face.

[ANNETTE]: “By any chance, do you know of anyone named 'Willard'? The message was something like 'Get Willard next', da da da... The rest got messed up and I couldn't read the rest... Me, I think it's another hit feud thing amongst gangs or whatever, but I know a few gang people and I don't know no Willard.”

[Aryck Venn]

Aryck could do little else but listen to the girl prattle on, his face befit with a rather confused look. As she spoke, the lanky junior kept shooting glances to Sean, who looked about as out of place as could be. Of course, the look the boy had on his face made it seem like anywhere he was with this girl, he was out of place. Aryck cocked his head somewhat to listen to her. She definitely did tend to steal the show when she was around, that much he had gathered already.

So... scratches underneath a seat are some kind of code...? Aryck mused to himself, relief flowing that this girl, clearly, was somehow connected after all, though he did not show it outwardly. The prowess of this network may be deeper than I initially expected. But what of this girl?

His eyes were downcast again, to gaze upon her as she deciphered studiously. Sean gave his aside, a useless piece of info, really, but Aryck could tell the boy was trying to make himself seem like he had a reason to be there after all. Aryck raised an eyebrow in his direction, acknowledging his presence and his words, before looking back down at the girl.

It's too natural to be an act... but is this chatterbox the kind of operative that works within this 'Network'? Have I truly done nothing but stumbled into an oversize gossip mill?

It was then that the girl looked up and asked Aryck about a name, one he did not recognize.

Willard...

Her theory was that it was gang-related; however, being a pillar, Aryck did his best to know what pseudo-gangs roamed the hallways, and he also had no recollection of anyone of import being named Willard. As such, needing to 'get' him seemed to be presumptuous. Either this Willard didn't exist, or if he did, he wasn't important enough that he needed to be 'got', whatever that entailed.

As he pondered it, his eyes looked up, noticing something he had previously overlooked. His eyebrows raised simultaneously, a look he still managed to perform whilst appearing nonchalant.

"Willard," he spoke again, pausing a moment after the first word. "The film. Perhaps it's a lead?"

To accentuate his point, Aryck's right hand rose from his side, all fingers but the index closing into a fist, with the remaining one pointing at a rack on a opposite wall...

A rack of videos. Of course, they were an Audio-VISUAL room, after all. Sure enough, near the bottom, in perfect alphabetical order, was the movie Willard on VHS. Aryck made no move towards it; it wasn't his lead, it was Annette's. Perhaps the rest of the clue was inside, perhaps it was simply a coincidence. Considering how eager Annette was to find something, the three people in the room would know soon enough.

[Valencia Donahue]

Because of her position on the floor, Annette couldn't see where Aryck was pointing so she squirmed a little more from beneath the chair before piping up and making Sean do something useful.

[ANNETTE]: “Sean, go check it out! Any lead is a good lead at this point 'cause it's too tedious to scour the campus and I don't feel like checking student records today! Those office aides are getting tired of me... Getting so high off of their high horse, working for the principals. I tell them, 'I'm doing this for Hircine's good!' and they're all 'No way, Jose!' Jose?! 'Don't you know who I am!? I'm Annette Steadfast from the school paper, The Trackers!' And they're all 'Nyeh nyeh nyeh! I'm not letting you look at these files unless you're the Captain or a Pillar and even so they still need to check with the Principals!' What a bunch of poppycock! I bet they're just making that up 'cause I uncovered that scandal last month! Huh, and sure, Layla can access those files too, but she's been having trouble lately because of all that suspicion...”

The more Annette muttered, the more closely Sean examined the tape from front to back to uncover anything he could from the tape. In all honesty, he never heard of this film before. He was more likely to watch the silly flicks for cheap over the summer with his friends than browse what may be pieces of cinematographic history. He read the summary aloud, and flatly:

[SEAN]: “ 'Willard is an awkward, inept young man ostracized by the world around him. His gloomy existance takes a turn for the weird, though, when he discovers that his connection with a pet rat has gained him acceptance among the ranks of rodentia, and soon, Willard is using his newfound army of vermin to get revenge on everyone who's done him wrong.' What a weird movie...”

Annette finally got out from under the chair and stood beside Aryck, their height difference extremely obvious. She dusted herself off and brought a hand to her lips in thought. She pointed at the tape and made a circular gesture as she spoke.

[ANNETTE]: “Anything inside the box? Is the tape rewinded?”

[SEAN]: “Nothing in the box. The tape isn't rewinded though. It looks like someone stopped right in the middle of the movie instead of ejecting the tape before the credits...”

A lightbulb went off in Annette's head and she rushed over to the lights. Sean, knowing her impulsive habits, made a mad dash for the VCR. Annette beat him to the punch and already hit the lights by the time Sean put the video in and turned on the screen, so he fell with a crash in his hurry to be by Annette's side. He had a feeling that this would be a great opportunity to have the editor in chief hang onto his arm in the dark while watching seems to be a horror movie, but if he knew where Annette was, he'd whimper noticing how she pulled Aryck to a nearby seat so they could watch together. The moment the video started up, this scene would play.

[Aryck Venn]

As had been the norm for most of the afternoon, Aryck simply played the role of the silent onlooker after his initial guess as to the identity of the note. Sure enough, Sean made his way over to the movie and read the back, noting that it was a strange movie. Aryck nodded his agreement as the film synopsis was read aloud. The young man hadn't seen the movie himself; however, he was aware that it was a niche film; a cult classic, if you will. Aryck liked artsy films sometimes, but even that one sounded a bit like a doozy.

Sean removed the film from its cardboard box, noting that it was not rewound; rather, it seemed to be stopped almost intentionally at a spot in the middle. The two journalists both seemed to have the same idea, as both of them rushed to different areas of the room; Annette, as Aryck had learned her name was, went to hit the lights and the boy named Sean popped the VHS tape into the player and turned on the TV. Before he knew it, his arm had been yanked into a seat next to Annette. The scene in question played, causing Aryck to cock an eyebrow. To most, the scene would simply be a random, morbid sight of a cat attempting and failing to escape a horde of mice.

To Aryck, however...

"It seems that someone is in trouble."

[Valencia Donahue]

Sean and Annette watched the scene unfolding on the screen, combing each frame for any clue that would help their search. As a standard, clues, traces, and leads had to be detectable in some kind of way. After all, what was the point of leaving a code for someone to decipher if no one could decipher it? The hardest codes to crack were the ones made specifically to cater to a small group rather than the general populace, like inside jokes being hints and keys. Annette really hoped this wasn't the case because she didn't want to watch the scene again after seeing the eerie conclusion of the cat. She was a cat person and she held onto Aryck as the rats ate the cat. Their “freshman” friend made a point worth investigating though, so instead of watching the whole movie, the editor acted on it.

[ANNETTE]: “And when I see furniture meant for storage and alternative passageways, I think of the passageway between the art room and the music room. Oh, Sean, please turn it off...”

Sean watched the scene while sitting on the floor and made his way back to the VCR to do as he was told, more worried about Annette than what he just watched. As Annette stood up and let go of Aryck, Sean also turned on the lights as the small girl regained her composure. She turned to Aryck and cleared her throat, ready to show the “underclassman” what she was made of again.

[ANNETTE]: “In case you didn't know, once upon a time, an art student got really pissed off and began stabbing at the wall between the art room and the music room to pass the time. Believe me, I sometimes carve stuff into walls and desks when I'm bored in that class too. The teacher is sooooo boring and anal retentive about her ideas of 'art', you know. Anyways, the student always covered up that huge hole in the wall with a large bulletin board. If you know how most walls can be in some places, you'd know that there's a narrow passageway inside the wall you have to squeeze through that leads to one of the closets in the music room. Most people use it to make out in during lunch, and I don't know how since there can be roaches, spiders, and rats in there, but I use it all the time to listen in on secret meetings~ I don't get squished at all in there and Sean is my bodyguard in the art room. Some people call that passageway 'Narnia'. Wanna go to Narnia... Freshman?”

The trailing of Narnia before the freshman comment was a sign that Annette wanted to better know this accomplice by name. With a smile to whatever response he gave, she'd bolt for the door to her destination. Sean being slower than the person he's trying to protect would try to keep up breathlessly, giving Aryck a person to follow if he wasn't already running alongside the speedy small student. The moment they open the door, they'd find that the art class is unoccupied for the day, or at a field trip according to the message scrawled on the bulletin board they'd have to move.

[ANNETTE]: “Now I wonder if we're going to find anyone inside Narnia if we're trying to help someone...”

[Aryck Venn]

((OOC: Sincerest apologies for my absence, V. Still luv me?))

"Narnia..." Aryck would repeat to himself, almost not catching the subtle tip that Annette was tiring of referring to the pillar by his (supposed) class title.

"Oh," Aryck said, snapping out of it, before the slightest of smirks crossed his face. "Aryck Venn."

He would pause a moment, to let it sink in to the girl, before finally going ahead and explaining himself. "School Pillar of Hircine."

Aryck considered for a moment the situation. Annette wanted him to go into a secret passage that led into a closet that would, presumably, lead them to the next step of this strange journey they had found themselves. "It's more of a reverse Narnia, is it not...?" He would muse, out loud, but more to himself than anyone else. "But yes. Let us go."

Aryck, not really knowing much about this passage other than what he had just been told, decided to hang back and let Annette lead the way, at least this time.