FEAR FEEDS FEAR! (ep. 7)

Picture by annathenewt

GM
--

## Summary

It has been three days or so since this adventure started.

Outside the school, Peonie's spell failed, and in so doing may have stopped time. The dumpster fades away. The colors are darker, everything is worn down. The pegasi aren't there. The wizbee field, a little further off, looks like it has not been used for a long time. The sky is different, dark; skeletal pegasi are flying in the sky. The door is unhinged. The brushes are bramble, but one plant looks the same as always: Byte.

Inside the school, Diane and Eon are frozen as well. The large classroom's door looks lifeless. In the hallway, the drawings are faded. Diane's posters have been replaced with those of other students.

When Diane can talk again, she's all by herself in the school. The plant she's planned to use as a rope has disappeared, as have Eon and the other students: *This is terrible*. As she starts walking down the hallways, she notices the posters of three unknown students, and spider webs: everything looks dead and aged in this graveyard land. Among the students on the posters, Diane recognizes one she's seen before: a young boy with brown skin and short dark hair, a long face, a little smirk and a little black witch hat. She doesn't recognize the other two: a girl with curly hair, a witch hat and lighter skin; and an attractive lady with a smile, straight long hair and a hat like Diane's own.

Diane can't see any names on the posters. One of the boy's shrivels away when she touches it. Diane bursts through the door, yelling, screaming:

> *I'm gonna find you! We don't belong here!*
>
>

Eon, who still wears his tinfoil-y hat, watches everything Diane does. To him, everything looks different — clean, no dust. Eon sees nothing where the poster was; everything around him looks untouched. While running down the hallway after Diane, trying to catch up, he casts a new spell, *Trash Heap*, to summon trash out of thin air. He is distracted by the cleanliness around him and stumbles over the words of his spell: little bits of trash do appear, but soon fade away and disappear.

Sypher is in a small room she likes a lot. As the familiar monitors slowly disappear, they are replaced with a piece of parchment and a quill. She starts writing, and keeps writing, Taylor Swift song lyrics. She can talk, but feels an urge to keep writing — she has to. She want to understand what's going on and looks for her tech: her bag feels lighter. She attempts, under duress, to change the pen into a spray can: her goal is to least not be able to read the lyrics she is compelled to write. Her new spell, *Make One From Another*, fails: she screams *No!* as there are now twenty pencils before her. The tip of the pencil she is now holding breaks; she feels an urge to grab another; she keeps doing it until the last one.

Ezra is in front of the same three people — Sypher, Peonie and Sage. She sees them talking, but hears nothing. They ignore her, just look at her with disappointment. Ezra doesn't realize something is different; she just assumes she did something wrong. Sypher, Peonie and Sage keep talking to each other, even as she asks:

> *Are you done with the spell? Can I help?*
>
>

Ezra gets further from them and they fade out. She is now alone, sitting in a chair; there are giant bells hanging around her. She isn't sure what happened:

> *Hello? Are you out there?*
>
>

No reply.

Ezra sighs: she doesn't know what she did; she's really sorry and doesn't want anybody to be sad.

A bell moves.

> *Are you over there?*
>
>

She walks toward the bell, sees nothing.

> *Talk to me.*
>
>

It's so quiet; she can hear her heart beating.

> *I'd prefer to talk to you, please ... Talking is nice. I like people. Please ... Hello. I'd make you tea ... I can make you a cupcake.*
>
>

Dianes see the fountain in the center was knocked down and the statue has fallen down. The ground looks dark, corrupted. The lovely garden in the sky is replaced with flying skeletal unicorns. Eon, in contrast, sees the garden in perfection — even cleaner than before; there are no trash bins and everything looks pristine. The sky is hazy, he can't see anything. He starts hyperventilating, as no trash, to him, means no comfort zone.

Diane, who has already flipped her shit, is officially pissed; she casts a new spell, *Buddy System*, to find the nearest person. It's a very internal spell, not a showy one; she doesn't need to show off because she's alone. She emanates a wave of energy that stops around an entity: there is something; the energy wraps around it then evaporates.

Diane keeps walking, hand out, where the thing was.

Eon, still panicked, sees Diane coming in his direction; she doesn't see him and pushes her hand into his head. Eon casts *Nova Trash* at the enemy. He freaks out while saying the words; a light starts whirling around; smelly trash appears in a snowball-sized globe; he misses his throw and tumbles back. Diane gets a little splash of trash, knows it comes from Eon — that familiar smell — and is okay with this: she's not alone now. For Eon, the trash just disappears.

Diane wants to find the guy on the flyer; right now she sees his image in her mind. She casts another new spell, *Lost & Found*, which allows her to find the location of a specific person or being. This boy — she assumes he is the taunting voice she heard earlier — is her enemy, even though she doesn't know him, because of how he talked to her. Diane weirdly feels bolstered; she is not afraid. Someone is messing with her friends; she's worried about Ezra; she wants vengeance. She focuses on the stupid boy, wants to ends him; this has become scary, she's pissed. Diane points her finger out. She feels the essence of this boy; it takes her back to the school, to the middle school door.

Eon sees her with her finger out, concentrating hard. He doesn't want to be alone without trash, so he follows her. Diane feels someone behind her.

Sypher now has nineteen broken pencils around her, as she's still writing Taylor Swift songs. Her pencil, that she has sharpened as needed, is halfway. She sees Swift's face on the back of the eraser and uses *CTRL Z*. She concentrates on the eraser, and for a moment she stops writing, but then her hand goes back down ... The paper swipes; there is a new one — a blank slate —; all around her are copies of the first page she wrote: her failure caused the opposite of what she sought. She casts *Burning Angst* to light all this paper on fire, but this in another failure. Sypher laments:

> *She is terrorizing me.*
>
>

All Sypher manages to do is wet the paper with her angsty tears; the lead drains from the paper and there is now writing flying around her.
Ezra is sad, feels abandoned, starts singing to herself — she's not a good singer. After just one verse, no sound is happening. Ezra starts pleading:

> I'm really sorry. I don't know what I did. I try very hard. I must have done something very bad.
>
>

The bells disappear.

Ezra is back in her bedroom. At home. She sees the familiar wizbee poster, Eloise Swiftfoot's posters and the Jasper Jinx Academy things. The room is messy, with a pile of dirty, sweaty clothes and home work, half-done, with scrawled notes. Ezra tries to figure out if it's real; she picks up a sweaty shirt: it's sweaty. *That's mine!*, she concludes.

Ezra turns around, goes to the door, leaves the room: *Hello?*

No one calls back.

She goes to the kitchen.

There is no one.

Ezra is hungry, starts baking ... except there is nothing; everything is empty — more empty than "I didn't go to the shop" empty.

Her mom is staring; she looks disappointed:

> *You couldn't stay in school.*
>
>

Dad joins mom.
Ezra starts replying:

> *But I ...*
>
>

Both parents shake their heads.

Ezra is confused, doesn't know why she's here.

Dad, seemingly ignoring her, says she needs attention ... this kind of school.

Ezra intervenes:

> *You can talk to me. Did I do something wrong?*
>
>

Her parents shake their heads again.
Ezra speaks again:

> *You're being rude and mean; I don't think you're real.*
>
>

Mom talks about her education needs, again.
Ezra, again:

> *You're not my parents!*
>
>

As she walks through them, they disappear.

Ezra is back in school. She sees everyone.

Ezra addresses her invisible tormentor:

> *I wanna be your friend if you'll let me [...] We can just talk.*
>
>

She hears giggling:

> *Words ... words ... What do they say when they're not around you?*
>
>

Ezra retorts:

> *What matters is that they're my friends [...] what they do.*
>
>

The voice continues:

> *I've played tricks on you.*
>
>

Ezra says it could be fun tricks, if they were friends. There is this fun trick she can tell: this one time ... Diane found a lemon, made it look like a wizbee ball ... Ezra played with it; it was really funny.

The voice replies *I like lemons*; a lemonade appears in Ezra's hand; she drinks it and says *Thank you*.

Peonie has a lemon on her hat. Sage has a lemon too. And Sypher is holding one.

Diane, still moving toward the entity, swings open the double door. She feels the energy of it. She goes straight down the hallway; she takes the left and then she takes the right; and she continues onward until she stops in front of another doorway ... the doorway to a stage room, where plays are put on, musicals are put on; sometimes you have all the school come together, and teachers will do a witches' bee and stuff like that.

Diane finds herself pushing open one of the four doors. Once she gets into the room, she feels the energy of this child growing; there are rows and rows of floating chairs with red velvet on them. Down at the center, she can see a light shining like a spotlight, shining at the center of the stage ... but the boy is not here — she can't see the boy yet.

Diane keeps following the energy, down toward the stage. Halfway down, a chair sways in front of her; she falls into it; it moves back over and now she's sitting in a chair.

Eon followed Diane but didn't pay as much attention to everything. He's also swooped up by a chair and finds himself behind Diane. It's a little jarring to him; he grabs the back of Diane's chair, which Diane feels, but she doesn't see anything.

Dust starts floating down in the light, around the shape of a person; and Diane sees the silhouette of a person. There is a floating pedestal with a microphone in front of this person. Diane can feel the essence of that person is even stronger now. She casts *Lost & Found* again; she feels drawn to that energy that's before her, but the entity doesn't appear. Diane looks very closely; it looks like it's standing there; she can't see what it looks like — it's just a silhouette — and she doesn't know if it's having emotions or anything of that sort.

The stage is very large; to the right and left are three layers of large curtains, so you could have multiple backdrops that could go on. These curtains are magically run — everything on this stage is magically run —; there is openings at the bottom of the floor that can go up and down through magic means.

It looks like there is a speech happening.

As Diane and Eon are just sitting and watching, they see three sets of chairs appear. One looks empty, and somebody seems to be sitting on the other two — there is floating dust, again —, but they can't see who they are.

Eon sees the same things as Diane, but cleaner: everything is shiny, the floor is sparkly.

Diane gets up and moves back to the aisle: *this is a debate*. She's still concentrating on her spell; the only thing she can really tell is that there is somebody standing at the pedestal; she can't really see what's happening with the three newly appeared chairs. Diane's initial response is *Kill! Kill! Kill!* or *Someone else might also be in Hell with us*. She thinks this is happening specifically to freak her out; Eon is around, Eon is there; she knows her head is being messed with; this is something Diane is good at ... she can use *Boo!* on herself — and hopefully freak herself out of it — or she can cast it on the weird boy who's currently in the debate, which might be his own version of Hell. She opts to cast it on the boy:

> *What's the scariest shit you've ever seen, because I'm gonna make it!*
>
>

If he wanna get in a tear fight, she's good at the tears; she has that tie to this kid; she feels the energy, it swoops around him, and goes into his ears and into his head; what Diane sees in her head is the entire crowd of the school; she sees faces she's never seen before, pointing and laughing: that's what his fear is. So, she reasons, he's stuck in here too.

She realizes this scene happens in her head only as she looks around and that's not happening; then she illusions it into being, she makes it happen: all of a sudden, around them, these children's faces kind of appear everywhere; these kids start appearing in these chairs, and they all point, and they just start laughing ... the kid that's standing up there, Diane can't see what's happening with him, but she just sees him standing still.

With a maniacal laugh, Diane revels in the moment while pondering her next move.

Eon also sees the kids laughing and pointing at the stage; on the stage he sees nothing. He is used to seeing kids making fun of him and stuff like that; that's what he thinks is going on because there is nobody up there. He will now snap; he won't be okay mentally for a little bit.

Diane stands up, walks up to the stage around the side — there is a staircase on both sides —; as she's walking up to the podium, she intends to make the illusion end; she wants to speak out and say: *Let's parlay! I've shown what I can do, and I can do worse; whoever you are and whatever is going on here [...] Have a talk!*

Meanwhile, there is a lead writing in front of Sypher that's also got the lyrics of the wonderful Taylor Swift. Sypher's pencil is getting pretty low; she might have to grab one of the other ones, one whose tip broke.

Sypher hasn't stabbed herself yet, but she feels that's rightfully coming as words in the shapes of Taylor Swift lyrics are floating in the air around her; and she has gone through seven more pages that she's written. She casts *CTRL+ALT+DEL* to clear all the lyrics from her mind — she is ready to go deep and wipe it clean. She looks at the words in the air and goes:

> *There is no way you can exist if you're not in my mind.*
>
>

She puts the pencil against the tip of her temple and she pulls from her temple, using the tip of her pencil like a wand, that conglomeration of every Taylor Swift lyric that she's ever subconsciously been hearing for like ever ...

> *You pull this pencil away from your head, and what the camera sees, what the viewers see, is this black inkiness coming out of your head, and it spins around, and it kind of goes into the pencil and it's all out of your head.*
>
>

Sypher's hand is grasping onto the pencil. She's successfully removed the lyrics from her head, but the pencil is drawing her to the paper and sh's holding it. She doesn't control it; it's a fight — this struggle of a fight is happening — and the pencil itself has changed: it was this pink, sparkly pencil that had Taylor Swift's face on its back; now it is this black inky glittery-looking pencil on the outside; the lead on it looks darker than it was before and the eraser itself has turned this gray color, and the Taylor Swift face is still there smiling at Sypher, and it winks.
Ezra is standing there with this empty glass of lemonade; there's a lemon on Peonie's hat; there's a lemon hanging in Sage's bag; and Sypher is holding one, and touching it like she's dialing something on her phone. Ezra hears laughing, and a giggling

> *Lemons are pretty funny!*
>
>

Ezra agrees:

> *Yep! They're also kind of sour sometimes; there was this other time that Diane told me the she had made me lemonade — actually, this is really delicious, that you — and she didn't put any sugar in it, so it's just lemon — lemon juice —; it was really sour and super tart and my face was like ... but I thought it was funny afterwards.*
>
>

She hears giggling and her glass is full of lemonade again. She drinks it; it tastes real bad: there is no sugar. Ezra is not amused: *Did you just do the same thing to me?* and *I shouldn't have told you about that*.

She's answered with laughs and a cackle; and as the voice is laughing it starts hyperventilating; and Ezra just hears this breathing and ...

Ezra intervenes:

> *Are you okay? You sound like you're working out [...] Can we play wizbee?*
>
>

The voice answers:

> *You said we were friends ... You said we'd gonna be friends.*
>
>

Ezra doesn't understand:

> *We could be friends. What's going on?*
>
>

Here's what's happening:

> *Your friends are playing tricks on me.*
>
>

Ezra asks:

> *What are you doing to them?*
>
>

The answer comes:

> *I don't like tricks; I'm the only one that's allowed to do them.*
>
>

To Ezra,

> *Well, that's not fair! [...] You can't be mean to people and then be mad when they're mean to you; that's not how the world works.*
>
>

Except that, according to the voice:

> *You don't understand; they were mean to me first.*
>
>

Ezra is anxious to know:

> *What did we do? What did they do? I've been trying to ask you.*
>
>

The only answer is singing:

> *Trick or treat; Trick or Treat on* *my feet.*
>
>

The voice starts going further and further away. It sounds like it's going into the school. The doors open and it starts ...
Ezra insists:

> *I'm talking to you!*
>
>

She starts running after the voice. It just keeps singing this over and over again and it goes *Take that, bitch!* and it pushes the door open, into the auditorium.

Ezra sees people sitting in these chairs; and they're all pointing, and they're laughing; and there's someone standing at the pedestal: a young boy, he has pale skin, he has short brown hair, he is actually wearing glasses this time and he is holding a piece of paper and he is shaking. There is three seats floating next to him: one is empty and the two others have other students on them — the short curly-haired girl with the glass and the straight-haired girl —; and then Ezra sees all of these kids pointing and the two kids that are standing next to him as well are pointing at the stage; and they're all laughing; and she just hears this cackling of laughter. She also sees Eon sitting, slouched into a chair: it looks like he's probably having a mental breakdown; and then she sees the back of Diane: she is standing on the stage in front of this boy, and she's pointing at him and holding a hand on him.

Everyone is being so mean, Ezra thinks it's time for her to call a *Time Out* — one that involves a coach, it's not about stopping time this time —; a little whistle appears around her neck; she whistles a coach's whistle, and an illusionary coach with a megaphone appears in front of her, and she's like:

> *Stop what you're doing! We need to huddle up and regroup!*
>
>

Everyone — including Eon and the kids on the stage — stops what they're doing; everyone stops pointing; they all look in Ezra's direction. Ezra sees that all happening and she has a moment — she actually has a bubble of panic, because she's never had the attention of this many people before. Then she keeps talking:

> *Stop laughing at them, you're being mean; and whoever you are, talk to us first and maybe we can apologize and make things better ... I don't think revenge is the answer to this problem.*
>
>

Ezra is yelling but she lacks confidence; she's not the leader — that's what Diane is supposed to do — but she knows that everybody is upset and unhappy and that she just wants everybody to be happy — that's all she wants right now — and she doesn't know how to get it; so she's trying really hard; so her voice quakes and at the end she stutters out. Because she's not super-confident in what she's saying, they all look at her; she gets their attention and, for a moment, there is silence.
Daine freezes everything and goes:

> *This is a taste, like, I see what you can do; you're good at it, I am too. Let's ... let's just talk.*
>
>

Diane fought her way here; it's a parlay, it's not the nice Ezra way of doing it; it's the "you freaked me out, you deserve just the same and I can do it; you think that you're above this; you are torturing me, Eye for an eye, all right, so we're on equal footing here; let's talk like people" way.

Eon makes a contraption out of two giant milk cartons, the ring from a milk bottle and bottles and uses his new *Through the Looking Trash* in an attempt to see things that are unsee-able, namely, what Diane is looking for or talking to. The device is made of trash and is repulsive to just hold to your face — enough so to help Eon with the roll.

Eon holds up his makeshift binoculars that — to him — smell delicious. Through the holes of the device he sees a young boy standing in front of this pedestal; he's pale, has dark robes and a dark hat on; he has short, dark brownish hair; he's got glasses on and he's holding a piece of paper. Eon recognizes him from the poster he saw in the hallway.

Eon freaks out about that kid being there.

All of the kids stop for a moment: they're looking at Ezra. Then they all start laughing and pointing at Diane. Eon, still looking through his binoculars, sees — as does Ezra, but not Diane — the kid that was in front of Diane, holding a paper; his head turns toward her but his body doesn't: it's creepy. His head turns almost all the way toward her, like an owl, and he grins. Diane hears his laughing and his voice in her head when he says:

> *You think you can beat me? Let's go!*
>
>

Eon puts his "glasses" down and the boy isn't there anymore for a brief moment. Eon starts laughing and pointing at Diane.

For Diane and the boy, the room is now empty — the kids are all gone — and they're standing in front of one another. Everyone sees Diane and the boy standing there, in front of everyone.

The boy lets Diane go first. She uses *#DianeForPresident* to make him drop the illusion world or mind control or whatever magic he has going on — she wants her spell to act like a counterspell. Diane goes *Drop the illusion, man; let's be real*; and the boy kind of stands before her and he walks over to her and he hands her a piece of paper and he says: *It is a receipt ... for poster board glitter and markers*. Diane has this urge to keep reading, and keep going it up and her thumb gets ink on it as she keeps moving up. As the receipt goes on, it starts to not actually say items; it starts to say things that she carries about and it just becomes like a list of her small failures.

Sypher sees Diane standing there and the boy standing in front of her; she sees Diane holding something in her hand and moving it. Sypher is still holding the pencil; the eraser just winked at her; it's the face of Taylor Swift; inside the pencil is this black glittery magic that's holding all the lyrics to Taylor Swift that Sypher has ever heard in her life; and she's fighting against the pencil, against the urge to hold onto it. She's also having this struggle with the paper.

Sypher is going to talk to this pencil. She can see a door out of this place — she had a subconscious terror they had removed the doors from the room. She looks at the pencil; it's shaking and quivering, and Sypher is like:

> *Listen, Taylor pencil, if you hate me as much as I hate you ... you just [...] walk out of here, you're coming with me* — she's yelling now — *I'm taking you hostage! You belong to me now!*
>
>

Sypher uses her other hand — the one that's not reaching for paper — to reach for the door. The door swings open but Sypher goes flying toward the paper with the pencil and her hand goes back down and she starts writing again on the paper. She shouts:

> *Nooooo! Pencil Swift is holding me hostage!*
>
>

Her friends get to react to Sypher's crisis.

Diane is standing there, looking through the receipt; she's having a moment where it's overwhelming to her, and then she sees Sypher's name on there, and she hears her scream; and then there is this moment ... of reality kicking in, and she hears her scream again. She can tell the direction.

Diane runs down the stairs toward where she thinks the scream is. Ezra books it after her — no questions. Eon is having a breakdown; he's collapsing on he ground, holding his face. Ezra sees him, his knees on the ground, his elbows on the ground, holding his head. She's worried about him, because she thinks he's kind a mess; so she's having a moment:

> *Eon, come on, let's go!*
>
>

Eon won't move; he just replies, almost whimpering:

> *Go! Go! Go!*
>
>

Ezra tries again — *Come with me!* —; he doesn't say anything, just focuses on something. Ezra offers him her hand; she tries to help him up; he's so reluctant to move: he can't ... there is no trash ... everywhere is so clean ... it's paralyzing him at this point. Ezra doesn't get what's wrong with him.
It's so clean ... Eon starts pulling out trash from his coat and holding it up and showing it to Ezra; and it's disappearing in front of his face — for Ezra, though, it's not disappearing —; and to him it's just like *Gooone!* and he's just losing his force. Ezra tries to get him out of it:

> *You know none of this is real, right? It's all in your head.*
>
>

Eon insists:

> *No, it's gone!*
>
>

He hold Ezra really close:

> *Trash is gone!*
>
>

Ezra channels her inner coach again, she's like:

> *You know what? Buck up! We still got ... with the bottom of the ninth, and we've got the third quarter left to go. You're part of the team and we have to get through it. This illusion is the worst but, you know what? we're friends, right? are we friends?*
>
>

Ezra casts *It's Not That Bad!*. She knows she went through something similar:

> *If you want trash, there can be trash! You just need to overpower them.*
>
>

She's holding on to Eon, and her words come out of her mouth with an extra fervor; and maybe it shatters the illusion around them, so that Eon can see the trash still in his hand — the trash he has conjured piled around him — and the effect of the spell is that he thinks things are not quite as bad as they seem.
*You know, you're right*, Eon replies. He opens up up his spellbook and casts *Where the Trash Goes* as Ezra is still holding him by what she imagines is a jersey, whispering *You can do this*. Eon is attempting to teleport all of them to the courtyard where the school's dumpsters are. He can only teleport himself and Ezra though — he would need to create a witches' circle to teleport the whole group. Ezra, still holding him, helps him some more with this inspiring speech:

> *You know what Eon? I don't know what to do here anymore; I'm a little out of my depth; I tried solving things with talking; and then, I think everybody's just being mean to everyone. Maybe they want to be mean ; and you know what? Maybe mean is important right now; and you know what? I don't know anyone else who is as mean as you, and Diane, and Sypher ... So, get out your inner trash and do something!*
>
>

Eon realizes Ezra is also at her breaking point — she really doesn't know what to do anymore. He lands on a page in his pizza box, starts reciting the spell and then they both just fall into pieces of trash; and then they pick themselves up, rise out of the dumpster in the courtyard and there is actual trash: everything is back to normal again.

Meanwhile, Diane is running down the hallway towards where she heard Sypher scream; she gets s to the locked doorway that leads to the computer room — the door that Sypher opened with a large key on a ring she had to give back to the Head Witch — and uses *I Can Fix It* to open it, without even checking whether it's actually locked: Diane dramatically rips off her cute necklace, changes the metal a little bit, puts it in there, wiggles it around — it's either very dramatic or very not ; she is motioning the key and it's doing its own thing. She hears that sound and she pulls the door open but the pendant she put in there is now broken and the door is only open for a slight moment; she rushes through, the door slams and clicks again: *Fuck!*

Sypher got pushed back into the desk. She is furiously writing. Diane, still running toward the door at this point, can hear pencil-scraping on paper. Sypher realizes: *If I can't kill you in pencil form, then it must be* ... She is going to change the pencil into the actual Taylor Swift — and try to do away with normal Taylor Swift, using *Make One From Another*.

At this point, it's desperation; she's got to the point she's so scared of the pencil that she would bring her literal greatest fear to life. She shouts at this pencil and for a moment the eraser on the pencil turns into a bubble head of Taylor Swift, and it smiles at her, and it's like ... she hears that voice she heard before:

> *I'll keep you; you'll stay here with me; they won't have you.*
>
>

Diane hears Sypher yells again down the hallway:

> *I'm gonna stab myself with this pencil!*
>
>

Sypher hears a door click and slam closed down the hallway; she hears footsteps on the ground — running — and that's when Diane hears her yell.
The pencil starts to sing:

> *You belong to me!*
>
>

As there is paper around Sypher, she starts cramming lyrics down Taylor Swift's throat: *SHUT UP! ...* and she hears the words she's putting in its mouth singing around her: *STOP SINGING!*

That's when Diane walks in through another door and sees Sypher holding a black sparkly pencil with Taylor Swift's bubble head on top of it and shoving paper into its mouth: she says *Shit!* and casts *Shhhhhh!* on her. She fails, and Sypher is actually more scared. She turns around towards Diane, who now looks like Taylor Swift to her, looks at her and says: *No, not you too*.

Diane is sure the entity — the same boy as before — is nearby; she casts *Boo!* on it again, and laughs at it:

> *We're gonna go head to head on the Boo! train.*
>
>

As Diane already knows the entity's fear is being laughed at, that everyone's making fun of him, she makes it so that the songs' lyrics are all about this kid; they suddenly sound like giggling about this stupid little boy; and all of the lyrics, if you read them, they've been written all along; it's not a change; it's just now he's seeing *Oh my god, they're all about me; they're all about the kind of person that I am, and how little I am, and how little I matter, like just ... just how cutting*. Every secret that he has is written by Taylor Swift into songs that he knows; they have a cute little boppy tune that people are dancing to: people dance to his fears and failures.

The head of Sypher's pencil changes all of a sudden; it no longer looks like Taylor Swift; Diane no longer like Taylor Swift: she just looks like Diane again; it — and the eraser — swings around a swirls into this form and before them stands this little boy; and he's holding his hands on his head, and the pencil just drops from Sypher's hand, and it looks like a normal pencil again; it's a short, yellow pencil. As the boy keeps saying: *No! No! No!*, he backs up into the shelves.

Looking in the room, there is no more paper, there is no more pencils: they disappear. Diane and Sypher see the server stacks: they're back into this room they were before; there are monitors up there and the boy is backing into the wall, looking as distressed as Eon did earlier.

Eon and Ezra are having a moment in the trash bin. Eon, slumped in the trash, is noce and relaxed — chill.

Ezra smiles:

> *You did it! ... Where are the other two?*
>
>

He doesn't know where Diane went; and he hasn't seen Sypher in, like, two days.

Ezra leaps out of the dumpster. As she parkours out of the trashcan and starts running back into the school, Eon tries to boat his way after her: he's not getting out of the trash.

Back in the control room, Sypher sees everything come back to normal; she's been panicking; this is happening. She kicks the nub of the pencil somewhere: she doesn't want to look at it anymore. Then, in a non-Sypher way, she tosses her arms around Diane's neck and gives her a big hug. Diane responds and, as they are hugging, the boy is still in the corner: *No, no!*

Sypher wipes the running mascara and black eyeliner from her face, and she stops, and she goes:

> *Who ... like, who's the kid?*
>
>

All Diane has got is the kid is what's causing all this. She is so tired ... She sensed everybody here, but she hasn't seen the one person that she came for — Ezra. This is very frustrating to her; she went in there because of her friends, but primarily for her really good friend, and she still hasn't seen her here. And it's kind of a breaking point; she wants Sypher to have her moment but ... she kicked the pencil, so she must be doing all right. It's time for Diane to freak out the boy; and she just walks up; and it's really tough for her, because she doesn't want to be mean — she's not a mean person.

The boys drops to the floor, still holding his head, and he is kneeling.

As Sypher wonders why the boy is like this: *What did you do?*, Diane kneels beside the boy and she makes the illusion stop again. Diane looks up at Sypher and goes:

> *Friendship is winning.*
>
>

She looks down at the boy, levels with him by getting down on her knees. She chills out and says:

> *We ... I don't know what you're going through, but your taking it out on us, that's bullshit; we, as a collective, as friends, can beat you and this will keep happening.*
>
>

Sypher is impressed: *Wow ... wow*. She pulls up next to Diane, Indian style, also on the boy's level:

> *It doesn't have to be a competition. Who are you?*
>
>

To the boy, though, *It's always a competition; everyone always wants to win*. It doesn't matter that Sypher has nothing to win: he would do anything to win. As for Diane, she's right:

> *You all have friends; next time I'll bring mine*.
>
>

He snaps his fingers.

As Sypher goes to grab him, she just sees the dust slowly disappear.

Ezra makes it to the doorway, running. The door is closed, she sees Diane charm stuck in the lock, si she knows Diane has been there.

Eon is rowing his way. The dumpster has wheels underneath, and he makeshifted an oar, and it takes him a long time to make it into the school.

They found the boy and now he's gonna come back with a vengeance — no matter that Ezra just wanted to make friends; or that Sypher was trying to be nice — she didn't have a chance to be nice; or that Eon was trying to be nice too.

## Notes

1. ↑ They never looked up the kids.
2. ↑ Eon's roll failed, with a 9.
3. ↑ With a double 1, for a total of 5 with bonuses.
4. ↑ With a 10, this was a partial success.
5. ↑ That roll was a partial success (12). Lauren mentioned trash disappearing from everywhere, Patrick/Eon replied: *I am the trash*.
6. ↑ In Nika's words: *What I know and what I know is different*.
7. ↑ *NftE*: I didn't get that word, I may be wrong.
8. ↑ With a 15, this spell was a full success.
9. ↑ With a 9.
10. ↑ This time, with a 6.
11. ↑ @little-red-dot's comment in chat: *Sypher is gonna break*.
12. ↑ *NftE*: Not sure about my notes again. The quote may be approximate.
13. ↑ The story prompted this comment from @ImpInMyHead in chat: *When Life gives you lemons, play wizbee*.
14. ↑ *NftE*: Spelling out stuff about magic.
15. ↑ Because Diane's roll, a 7, failed — despite a total +4 bonus.
16. ↑ Nika — but not Diane — knows she might thus be undoing everything that Ezra is doing.
17. ↑ She rolled a 13 — full success — including a bonus for the fact that her being devious is Eon's favorite thing.
18. ↑ *NftE*: I missed a few words here.
19. ↑ Patrick called this an *Invader Zim* moment.
20. ↑ This is what really happens, what Maggie decides her partial success (10) gets her.
21. ↑ Little Red Dot's comment: *I hate you!* (and laughs)
22. ↑ *NftE*: Just adding this comment by Nika / @nikasaur in chat: *holy shit this is epic horror*.
23. ↑ @nikasaur commented on it: *maybe I was just bad at lemonade*.
24. ↑ NftE: Or was is smell my feet?
25. ↑ Here is another comment by @nikasaur: *(Sorry @RandomTuesday I undid all your good will)*
26. ↑ Nika explains Diane is not aware of this; she'd act differently if she did. In chat, @nikasaur adds: *I would die for Ezra*.
27. ↑ Maggie, about the megaphone, rhetorically asks: *Who knows where it came from?* To which @MangledPork replies: *Good old hammerspace*.
28. ↑ This is what Ezra's first roll of the night, a partial success (11) gets her.
29. ↑ Ezra rolls a partial success (10) on the roll that decides how effective her pep talk is.
30. ↑ In chat, @nikasaur adds: *I didn't say I, nor Diane, are wise*.
31. ↑ *NftE*: this is my summary of the suggestions that were made and Nika's *All of the above*.
32. ↑ Which ends being a partial success (10).
33. ↑ It was in a scene with Peonie, a long time ago.
34. ↑ *NftE*: Maggie went for this suggestion by Little Red Dot. To Nika, *that's not as terrible as I thought it would be*, namely *I'm sure it's devastating and Diane dies on the spot.*
35. ↑ This occurred as a result of Diane's fail, with a 6 (a double one and +4 bonus). In Nika's words: *When we fail, we fail, y'all*.
36. ↑ And Little Red Dot sees *deep psychological messed-up stuff* in *the value of her small failures*.
37. ↑ And Maggie concludes this recap with: *Sypher, what would like to do?*
38. ↑ This, after her roll to get out — not a spell, just a physical thing — fails with a total 5.
39. ↑ @nikasaur, in chat: *y'all I deserve some whisky after this, it is STRESSFUL*
40. ↑ Ezra and Eon fail their rolls; Diane succeeds with a 14.
41. ↑ @nikasaur, in chat: *how dare you ship me with Eon when he deserves Ezra*
42. ↑ Lauren clarified that Ezra's sports metaphors are better than her own, like, *Get on that broomstick and just ... howl like the wind!*
43. ↑ Lauren gets to describe the effect of her success (13).
44. ↑ Thus prompting this comment by @Kikka: *The bases in your heart are loaded, kid. Time to bring yourself home*.
45. ↑ As @Doverin57 remarked: *there's no place like home*.
46. ↑ Lauren agreed with Maggie that that kind of compliment might be Lauren coming through.
47. ↑ Ezra's roll is a full success (14), including a +6 bonus.
48. ↑ Ezra's speech prompted this comment from @lozARCANE: *Wholesome had some issues there*.
49. ↑ This roll is another welcome success, after so many failures: 14, including a +3 bonus.
50. ↑ @Doverin57 offered a different solution in chat: *Fireball is the solution to literally ALL of life's problems*.
51. ↑ This is what Diane's partial success (12) got her.
52. ↑ That's the best a partial success (10) could get her.
53. ↑ With a total 9.
54. ↑ This is what a full success (13) on her Boo! roll does for Diane.
55. ↑ NftE: I'll end this recap with this comment by @nikasaur in chat: *fear feads fear. I'm the person who bullies the bully and says "quit it you silly"*