To be honest, and for the entire rest of the bus ride the little pink *charmed* indicator was practically all Ed could think about and by the time the bus noisily squealed itself into its last lurching halt, Ed had all but resolved himself to perhaps simply tail the dude for a bit. His first class was English and he slept through most of it anyway so he sort of figured it wouldn’t hurt too much, even if he was a little late.
After saying goodbye to Manny, who’d somehow or another ended up with not one, but both the girl’s phone numbers. Ed had split off from his usual route through the crowds to the more sparsely populated general parking areas.
It was mostly seniors who had early classes or clubs that came through here so Ed was somewhat worried he’d be out of place. Still, since there were a surprisingly large number of freshmen cutting through the tennis courts, it was probably a needless worry.
Ed snuck in behind a gaggle of them. Eyes trained on the *charmed* indicator as it bobbled through the parking lot. It seemed to be heading for the track.
Ed blinked. And when a pair of probably juniors suddenly shouldered passed him he realized he’d simply stopped. Quickly, he looked back for the charmed indicators, because yes, and upon second glance there were indeed not one, but an entire two of them now. Bobbling between the cars.
Hastily, Ed jogged a little to catch up. By the time the names made it to the track they’d multiplied to at least a good six and now that he could actually see their owners, it was very apparent that they were some sort of… well, what would this even be called? Cult? They were all rather solidly well-built and objectively good-looking as well. Plus they were all doing some sort of synchronized ritu—Oh, no. This was just the basketball team wasn’t it.
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They were doing warmups on the field and there was even a small gaggle of girls that had congregated onto the bleachers. Ed frowned at that. Wait, they couldn’t all be seniors right? If they weren’t skipping, Ed really didn’t see how this could be allowed otherwise.
He scanned their faces, ok that one definitely wasn’t a senior. He swore he’d heard that name in a roll call. Also, that one wasn’t even an npc! The bus driver had been labeled a bus driver and some of the teachers had been teachers so if he followed that trend didn’t that mean this girl was actually an adult?! Why in the world was she watching the basketball kids here? She wasn’t even a teacher! She was a… Ed squinted at the label. That couldn’t be right. Even the adults with an occupation had the npc tag, albeit much tinier and under their apparent job description. Here it just said that she was a witch. Just Witch, that’s it. In bright bold green, and in complete and total contrast to the usual stark bright blue of the npcs’.
Though, speaking of stark bright blue, Grindliah—that was the name of the witch—had precisely those sort of eyes. Ed knew because well, oh. She was staring straight at him wasn’t she. He hurriedly looked behind himself. The courts had emptied of freshmen and there was a good lot of nothing behind him. Unless she was looking at that one soggy tennis ball. He very much doubted that though.
Ed had watched enough horror movies by now to understand that if he was screwed, he was screwed, but if he wasn’t? Slowly, Ed turned around to give his absolute best obliviously cheerful wave he could manage to the girl. He gave her a nervous smile too for good measure before abruptly turning around again so he could as briskly as humanly possible… speed-walk away.