The bell echoes throughout the school, signifying that the students' lessons were finished and break could commence. Whilst Pip goes to buy lunch, Zita walks to a quiet room on the other side of the school to study. He parouses the textbooks content, the material being dedicated to subjects Zita didn’t even take classes of, simply expanding his understanding out of pure interest.

He sits by a window, turning over the page as he reads. He works his way through a text on the battle of Hastings, occasionally spying out of the window to relax and let his brain descramble. Whilst he's staring outside the window, he notices movement, a person passing by. He peeks to see who it is,

hm? Let's see who that is- He figures.

Who he sees, he cannot begin to describe. A figure marching past the window dressed in an all black robe at an eerily slow pace, causing Zita to fumble his book and devote his undivided attention to the person outside. As the stranger exits the view of the window, His face contorts, eyes widens and legs stretch to stand up, staring at the now empty thinking about what to do.

Diiid~ a creepy stranger in a cultist robe walk past me, or was that my imagination? He asks himself, staring out of the window as he slowly puts his book back inside his bag.

Zita starts to think as he slowly begins moving towards the door of the room, still glancing at the window. The shuffle out is slow and uncertain, eyebrows raised in confusion.

... should... should I check what that was? Report it? Maybe my eyes played a trick on me... -OH! Maybe there's a Danger and Doormats group at the highschool! I've always wanted to try that! Their cosplay is quite convincing!- I should go ask!

Zita composes himself and starts walking to the nearest door that leads outside, exiting to the right wing of the school and stepping out to the concrete ground and the view of a fenced off forest. He recalls the robed figure walking to the back of the school, the direction of the forest entrance. Zita follows that path, still a bit closed in body language and debating with himself, sheepish as to what he should do.

It's probably nothing... If anything, doing this is just something to kill time! I doubt this school would have some cult in it... oh, Pip would love to hear if it did, though!-

Zita walks, now a bit excited to get a good story to cheer his friend up. The metal fence blocked him from seeing the forest, Zita walking along it and humming. Zita had been to the forest a few times, remembering it to be a fairly simple place if a little hilly and quiet. Students weren't typically allowed in, except for assignments or rare occasions, like wildlife studies. Mind you, most of the students would refuse to go in if they could anyway. The factors that deterred most students were the shoe-ruining mud, the odd smell of the greenery and dung and of course, the statue.

Atop of a tree stump a wooden statue sits, carved of the wood from the tree that once stood there. The effigy is of a child sitting on the stump, legs dangling from the wood as they read a book rested on their lap. Their uncanny toothless smile and glassy, featureless eyes were enough to persuade most kids to not hang around this area too long. The statue was made in the memory of a former student who had the misfortune to die whilst attending the school, communioned decades. The shrouded figure in the robe currently has a phone to their ear, standing by the creepy statue.

"- okay... then, over the river? Understood. I'll be sure to." The robed figure says over the phone.

"Uh Uh! That should be where the bunker is! Any noticeable sources of aetherplasm nearby?" The person on the other end of the phone asks in a lively tone.

The robed figure turns to the statue. She sees... a dark blue aura radiating off of it, the stagnant black smoke emanating from the wooden statue as if it were charred. "...one deposit of aetherplasm. The slightest traces of a soul, and a large sampling of peoples disgust of the statue. Could form a ghost, but unlikely." She says to the person on the other end.

Zita, who is watching her from behind a tree, does not see the aura, nor know what she is talking about.

The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

... What... What on earth is she talking about? Is she... high? She has to be high, right? The hell is aetherplasm and what does she mean disgust is physically... inside the statue? Maybe she's a psych ward escapist- Zita ponders, hiding behind the tree whilst watching her. The smell of mud and earth hangs in the area.

"Yeah- yeah- are you sure you're not stalling now?" The cloaked figure askes in a frustrated tone, not an ounce of humor in her tone, before she abruptly says; "-right, I'm finishing this. Bye." Then hangs up, continuing to walk through the trodden forest path between the bushes and trees. Zita follows not too far behind her.

Can't stop now, I have to know what they are up to! Pip would lose his mind if he saw this! Ohohoho… he thinks to himself, getting excited whilst following the robed figure through the undergrowth.

At first the girl follows the treaded path of the forest, slowly walking down a hill and following the right side of a 6ft wide river for 2 minutes or so. But that's only for so long. Out of nowhere the figure hops the river and lands on the other side, quickly disappearing into the greenery of the other side before Zita can even process that they have vanished. Zita side steps out of hiding, spying the leap she just took and contorting his eyebrows in confusion, eyes wide and mouth agape. "What the-... where...'' After a second of confusion, Zita slowly walks towards the river, evaluating how far he'd have to jump to clear the water. He thinks a second, unsure as to what to do from here.

... I... sincerely doubt this is a club anymore... surely not. this is something else, could be sinister... Do I... go back to class, or fully commit to figuring out what this robed person is trying to achieve in the middle of the forest? I…

There is the briefest of pauses. A minute later, Zita's feet pound against the hills of the forest, trying to get a running start on his long jump. Clearing this river is his goal. After a decent run up from on top of the hill, he makes a leap at the river edge, his body bounding over the streaming water. He clears all the way to pass halfway, goes beyond as he begins to descend and by fortune, clears the river, landing on the edge of the other side. His heels get caught on the edge however, causing his balance to falter and begin to fall backwards as his arms flail in the air. His balance is temporarily compromised and risks a watery drop, but in his panic notices a branch protrude out of the bushes like an aiding hand. He uses the twig as a grip to pull himself up, able to reclaim balance and use the tree branch as support and pull himself up. After that scare he takes a deep breath and begins to walk through the bushes and trees, leaves rustle against him as he occasionally gets pricked by nettles or thorns, the boy letting out a little "ow!" When stung.

He follows the path through the forest that the unusual stranger took, seeming walking forward infinitely.

does the school forest really stretch out this far?!-

After what could be 5 minutes or an hour of walking, Zita finally reaches the stranger's apparent destination. A clearing with a shed-sized concrete cube, looking like a cinder block with metal doors in front of it. The doors hang ajar, an opened lock and a loose chain layed out in front of the door. Zita... hesitantly shuffles closer, creeping closer and closer to the door, peeking inside the shadow-shrouded interior. He spies a stairway made of metal steps leading down to a concrete corridor.

This building seems to be some variety of bunker…

Zita hesitantly puts his foot on the first stair as he stares down the corridor, staggering and solemn, lips tightly closed and sweat crawling down his face. He is unsure of the suspects' sick schemes that lay downstairs. But now, he has no choice. He's come so far, he needs to know. And so, he tip toes down the stairs, stepping into the darkness. Zita's mind races. He has to know what this person is doing. He needs to know why. He needs to know.

With sweat rolling down his body and regret for deciding to follow this figure creeping into his soul, he suddenly runs down the stairs, hoping to catch the stranger in the act of their deed, sprinting down and down and down until finally, he reached it. He runs down the corridor, kicks open the door and looks inside. An empty concrete room with a blue glow coming from the floor the cloaked figure crouching-

Before the boy even knew what was going on or what he was looking at, a blast of blue washes over the two of them like a cyan flashbang. He feels himself get blown away, his face and body flying back from the blue blast. Whilst the blast occurs and blinds him, he feels... something. Something he has never felt before.

He isn't sure what it is, but it's in his chest. He feels like a weight was added inside of him, like a boulder has been tied to the inside of his abdomen. No, not a boulder. Something... hot, pulsing... not quite living, though. Feels too rythmic to be a separate organism, Zita feels intune with it, it is more like another heartbeat, pumping a new heat throughout his body. Every pump makes his fingers and toes feel as if electricity was running through them, or that they've gone dead and fuzzy from restriction of blood. Whilst he experiences this, he feels like he is lying in an abyss, drifting in something whilst unconscious. The best comparison would be that his body is floating atop a midnight sea.

Then, he finally wakes up as the feeling fades and the source of this feeling sinks further into Zita, vanishing. His eyes slowly open... then are forced awake as he hears the most mortifying scream he has heard in his life. High pitched, raspy, almost like a bird's caw but... not, somehow.

Zita struggles awake and forces himself to stand up. He is in the forest again, now alone and in the middle of a clearing. He thinks about the horrible sound he just heard, not that of a dying animal, more a battle cry from something that should not be. Beads of sweat roll down Zita's face once more as he looks left and right, arms up in a guarded stance as he prepares to defend himself out of instinct. After a moment of focus, he begins to hear it, footsteps near him, ones that sound humanoid. He turns to the location of the sound only to find... the noise has stopped and all that he can find is a faint, glowing particle of blue, hovering like a firefly. Zita stares at the particle with a confused look, scared and confused as he slowly begins inching towards it with a strong sense of anxiety. Then he feels it in his chest again, the source of the pulse flaring up and expanding like a balloon blown into, feeling like it's shaking and jittering inside himself, only for that sense to suddenly be interrupted by the sensation and force of something jump onto him, dragging the boy to the floor and as Zita screams.