No Norm this week, due to crazy levels of work, so the police just kept Darius in the station for the whole episode. I typed most of this while we played, so it should be much more accurate than last time’s one, which was patchy.

After dark, Alex, Megan and Calvin are still in the school after breaking in. In the bio labs, Calvin is having difficulty seeing so goes to flick on the lights. Alex stops him, her slayer hearing has detected the sound of footsteps. The security guard opens the door and swings the flashlight around the room. Megan hides under the teacher’s desk, Calvin dives under a bookshelf and Alex uses her slayer awesomeness to leap up and hold herself flattened on the ceiling.

The security guard crosses the room, opens a drawer in the teacher’s desk, Megan is frozen in fear. He extracts a bottle of something and pours himself a measure. He replaces the bottle, exits the room. Megan breathes again. <!–more-

Alex waits until she can't hear the footsteps any more and drops down, the others emerge. Alex crosses to a window, gestures to Calvin 'hey is there an alarm on this?'
Calvin (checks it): Just looks like a window.
Alex opens the window and jumps out, realising once she has done so that this is the second floor and the others probably won't be following her.
Calvin: did she seem depressed to you earlier?

Megan and Calvin walk out the building, going out the way the meat is delivered, just to pick up on any extra clues. The security door, which is a swipe card activated one and should be locked by default is set on 'unlock', very suspicious. Alex meets them on the other side of the door, conspicuously not saying anything about randomly jumping out of a second floor window. They speculate for a while about who could have been responsible for fixing the door. Calvin reckons its Xavier or a staff member.

*Break for fireworks.*

Calvin breaks open the security door's circuit box so that Megan can look inside. She can see it's been tampered with, an extra bit has been soldered on so she souvenirs it. In the car she examines it, using Calvin's medium sized torch. Calvin drives past the river so they can dispose of the dead flying monkey.

A: So what'd you find, Megan?
M: It's not right, like, I don't see how it could be this magnetic. I guess it must be magic. I don't know, I guess I'll have to take a closer look.

Alex mentions that she's going out patrolling.
Calvin: I'll come too.
Megan:…me too.
Calvin and Alex both look at her black eye incredulously. C+A: Are you sure?
M: Yeah?

They pull up outside the cemetery, arm up and walk in.

C: So, uh, Alex, how's your brother?
A: Oh he's getting better, he's back home. Mum and Dad are hovering around him. There's this real air of blame about the place.
C: Blame?
A: Yeah, they're blaming each other, like, you should have done more, I should have done more.
C: Right.
A: And they don't seem to notice me at all. Like they haven't once asked why I'm going out more often. It's like they don't even notice me or care at all.
C: join the club
M: Jim Lock is always over at my place, and my Dad's only been gone 6 months. *starts crying* I mean, he could totally still come back!
A: Of course he could.
C: Yeah, I mean, Martha was missing for two years and she turned up.
Alex puts an arm around Megan, comfortingly.
A: So, Calvin, how's Gina?
Megan cries harder.
C: Oh, I dunno.
A: She seemed to be coming out of her shell a bit more recently.
C: She has? I haven't really noticed.
A: Yeah, she's been remembering a lot more too, about the world.
C: Probably because of Darius doing that spell in front of the magic mirror.
A: Yeah, she's letting the people know more about the world.
C: Or she's expanding her world.
A sucks in breath: Yeah.
M: Maybe we should go through and check?
C: No way. Not until we can figure out how to fight her.
M: Alex could punch her right?
A: Don't you remember the way she made and threw fireballs?
M: Oh yeah….but she wasn't really making them herself, it was more like she was manipulating the flame that was already present.
C: Kinda like Pyro in the Xmen movie.
A: Right, so I have to work on getting better at dodging.
M: And catching.
C: Right, or we could get Darius to level up, you know. Fight fire with fire.
A: I don't think you could call Darius fire.
Vampires: Excuse us.
A: What do you want?
C: You know, it's really rude to butt in like that.
V: I don't like talky food. *Attacks*

There are two vampires, looking recently dead and with game faces on. Alex displays her cool moves, kicks one in face, hits the other with her machete.
The kicked vampire punches Calvin in the head since he was continuing the conversation and saying 'yeah, you have to get better at dodging' comedic irony. Calvin retaliates by embedding his axe in the vampire's shoulder, Megan skirts around behind the vampire to help Calvin, stakes the vamp, but misses the heart.
The vampire spins to hiss at Megan and backhand Calvin at the same time, who manages to dodge. He swings back round and thwacks the vamp with his axe which finishes it off.
Alex and her vamp are having a tug of war with the machete, which she inevitably wins and kills the vamp.
Alex: Yeah, so I reckon we need to get better at fighting first, then we should be able to take her down.

Calvin drops them home, as she gets out Alex asks how his sister is, he mentions that his parents haven't been in touch.

Inside Calvin's lounge, Mason and Martha are…acting weird, like Calvin interrupted something. Mason excuses himself, saying its getting late. Calvin sits down and looks at Martha.
Martha: Are you OK? Your face..
C: Yeah I'm fine. So, what was all that about?
M: Um…Oh yeah, I'm the older sibling, I don't have to tell you anything.
C: Come on.
M: It's getting late, I'm gonna go to bed.

Megan gets home to an empty house, goes to the loft to find her chemistry and science geek stuff, examines the circuit board. It's been magnetised somehow. Megan then does more research on the photo by checking Bebo. She finds a freshman's profile who has lots of photos of cheerleaders. The guy whose hand is in the murder scene photo is probably Travis Beard. Megan looks up his school record and discovers that he is a recent transfer from another school, he's been in detention a few times, he's had difficulties in his other schools, attacking people. He hasn't joined any clubs, he's got good grades in math and science.

On Tuesday morning Calvin waits out the front of the school for Alex to arrive.
Alex: Geeze, your face looks painful, *reaches out to touch the bruise*
Calvin: Don't! Touch it.
A: Oh OK.

Calvin asks Alex if, while they were dating, Mason ever mentioned Martha to her. Alex says no, apart from saying how strange it was when she disappeared. She asks why Calvin is asking and at first he won't say, but she presses him and he tells her about the night before and how it felt awkward to walk in on. Alex doesn't seem that fazed.
A: Are you OK?
C: Yeah, course.
A: You seem freaked out.
C: I'm not freaked out. It's just weird is all.
A: OK.
C: I gotta go to class. *takes off*
A waits for a minute, stunned, and then runs to catch up with Calvin.
C: What?
A: Nothing, I've got school, too…

Megan isn't in biology class, but Alex catches up with her between classes at the locker. Megan hasn't slept all night, with all the research she's been doing.
M: Hey, do you have a moment?
A: of course.
Jim Lock: Hi Megan! I'm here to fix a lock.
Megan shudders, Alex makes an excuse and they take off.

Megan tells Alex about Travis, his history and his probable being the murderer.

Savannah comes up to them: Hey, Megan, you're friends with Darius right? Is he at school today?
M: I dunno, uh.
S: because we were supposed to be meeting to talk about our science project.
A: I'm gonna go, now.
S: Ew, why were you even hanging out with her?
M: Um…

Meanwhile, Calvin has been subtly stalking Xavier, convinced he's up to something. Calvin opens Xavier's locker again and finds monkey bones on a string.

Alex startles Calvin. Megan catches up with them, they tell Calvin about the Travis thing.
C: Oh and Xavier's the one summoning flying monkeys.
A: how do you know?
C: rattles the bones at Alex.
A: ew.

Calvin terrorises freshmen finds out that Travis hasn't been seen since yesterday.

Alex, Calvin and Megan leave school to check out Travis's house. There is an encounter with Mason in the hall, while Calvin and Alex laugh about 'last night'. She bumps into him, drops books, awkward moment.

Megan grabs a pamphlet on the science fair, worried that her carefully won social life is slipping away from her. She also checks the police records to find out what's going on with Darius. They drive to Travis's house, it's drab, boring bit of suburbia. Middle classish, maybe a bit poorer.

Alex pretends to be a peer buddy, checking up on Travis. His mother is freaked out and says he didn't come home the night before, she hasn't seen him since school.
He was working on his science project.
A: what was his science project?
Travis's mother: He was doing a to scale reproduction of Pompeii.
Alex gets Travis's number off her and little more information.

Alex tries calling Travis's number, it rings for a while and then its answered by a Janitor. Locker 259, the phone was found abandoned.
Calvin: well, we know his name, we just need Darius to do that spell again.
They pull up outside Darius's house and that's where we ended

Previously on Fall…..Episode one
Epsiode two
Episode three
Episode 4 “Watch Your Back.’
Episode 5 “Worst Day Ever”.
Episode 6 “Vanity”.
Slayage by Gaslight and ep 7
Episode 7 “Change the Channel”
Episode 8 “This is your brain on drugs”
Episode 9 ‘You can’t make an omelette.’
Episode 10 ‘Full House’
Episode 11 ‘Head Trip’
Episode 12 – ‘Family Ties’
Episode 13 – ‘Getting Ahead’
Sophie’s recaps.

Darius wakes up and can’t remember where he is. That is, until there’s a knock at the door and Gina asks if he wants breakfast.

Downstairs Calvin and Martha are talking and laughing over some inexplicable family joke that makes no sense to the others. Megan and Gina are giving them space. Darius has a toaster waffle. It’s Monday morning.

Megan goes home before school and has an awkward conversation with Jim Lock, her mother’s new boyfriend, he wants to know where her black eye came from. She makes a lame excuse (she sucks at acting remember) and runs upstairs to fix what she can with make up. Megan swings by Darius’ house on the way to school, although I don’t remember why. Myabe just to get the full story about their trip?

Darius is severely jet lagged and sleeps through much of school.

Megan has a long and awesome conversations with the cheerleaders, who ask about the bruises and also what happened to her over the weekend, since none of them saw her. There is some disturbing talk about how it wasn’t a bruise it was an eye hickey, then the subject of the weekend:
Megan: I went to….the Hamptons? In New York?
Tiffany: Who did you go with?
Megan: I went…by…myself? To meet……..a penpal?
Aurora: A penpal? Like people had in the 80s?
Megan: *runs away*

After school Alex is running late for lacrosse practice, since she wasn’t at school all day. She’s the last from the team in the locker room as the cheerleaders take over, gossiping and taking their time getting ready for their practice. There’s a piercing scream, Aurora has found the severed head of Jason, the star quarterback in her locker. Aurora becomes hysterical, falling to the floor and having to be comforted by Tiffany.

A teacher comes in to find out what all the screaming is about and promptly faints dead away. Alex runs to get Miss Hodgkiss, who is the closest teacher she can find. While she’s gone, Megan goes to investigate the severed head. She gets pretty close and gets a good look at the cut and even touches it before fainting herself. She lands on the fainted teacher. (more…)

I’ve never signed up for Fright Night before, because I was too scared.

True facts. I figured that if Wellington’s best roleplayers were specifically writing scary games then it would be an evening of terror. Plus, it was easy to justify this because it’s a very small convention and games fill up way fast and I was too late to sign up, because I was a ‘fraidy cat, and so I would let the choice be made for me.

This year take up was slow, however, and Sophie sent me a peer pressure email about how I should sign up. Fright Night fell of Hallowe’en this year, and I love Hallowe’en, and I thought I wouldn’t have anything to do since Lee would be performing. I looked through the games and one from each session immediately jumped out at me. I went ahead and signed up. I told myself that I’ve done plenty of horror roleplaying and loved it to bits. I was brave!

Fright Night went ahead and I got into both of the games I had hoped for. Communing in Darkness, a mini-LARP run by Donna and set in 1920s Boston at a seance party. Amphigori played the medium and man, was she convincing. I was Mercedes, a socialite with a fascination with the occult who was sceptical due to all the fake seances she’d been to but also desperate to believe it was real.
(more…)