Nothing Ingenuity can't Fix//OPEN

The sun blessed the meadows of Foresta’s school grounds. The green grass shone with excitement for the day. That is, until they were crushed underfoot by a titanic golem, whose body was composed of sand. The creature scanned the area with its three emerald eyes. Once the area was deemed secure, the sentry picked up its feet and made its way to its next checkpoint.

Within the shadows of the building itself lurked a hooded figure. They wore a lavender cloak, one that easily disguised their hunched over figure. They poked their hooded head out of the shade, their gaze following the golem as it walked out of sight. With campus security gone, the mysterious figure did a quick peek left and right, like they were about to cross the street. There would be no better time than the present.

The cloaked figure made a mad dash out of the shadows, a wagon being drawn behind them by their spindly arm. The wagon made quite the echoing clunking noise as it raced across the meadows, but luckily it didn’t have much further to go. The cloaked figure darted directly toward the brush, ramming straight through the bush and disappearing past the treeline.

Once securely within the forest, the hooded person put up the brakes. They stopped the wagon with their foot and took this opportunity to finally throw the hood back, revealing themselves to be none other than Ms. Schmidt. It was undoubtably her considering that her housefly face was nigh unmistakable, might be the maroon colour of her compound eyes. She huffed a good puff, her lower jaw splitting open as she exhaled, releasing her labellum and letting it dangle freely. “Track star, am not” she sighed.

It didn’t take long for Lotte to get over her windedness though. Immediately after catching her breath, she turned to her wagon eagerly. Within her cart were three amorphous mounds shrouded under three separate tarps. She ripped off the first of the three, revealing a small drone. She took this time to unveil herself as well, uncurling her cloak and freeing the spindly limbs on her abdomen. As they uncurled, they reached for her belt, which had a set of joysticks where the buckle would be. When the appendages got a good grip on the controls, the drone took to the air, rising to Lotte’s eye level.

Lotte gazed into the camera. She cleared her throat. “P-2-4. Test 1.” With that, she unveiled the next item in her wagon of goodies. Under the second tarp was a cardboard box, or at least it looked like one. When she grabbed it though, it made a metallic thunk. She placed it on the ground and took a few paces backward, leaving her drone in the exact same position, just tilting it down so that it was focused on the box. She just stood there, watching and waiting.

    The wheelbarrow had not been his first choice of vantage points today, that would have been the rooftop perch from which Knell had been observing the sand-golem he so loathed as it wandered the nearby grounds. It was something he did now and again, ever since being treated with a good deal of disrespect by something lesser then the mortals that held his fondness and mercy.

But plotting the security guard’s inevitable destruction took a backseat the moment he heard the sounds of that little cart being pulled ever so frantically. Just as the guard had passed too, which logically meant that this individual was either not looking for company, or better yet defying one of the rules or customs of the academy. It took the shade all of five seconds to decide on a course of action. There wasn’t much to consider really, such haste could only mean the presence of stress, and stress meant sustenance. Sustenance that could compensate for a huge waste in energy simply to alleviate his growing sand-induced boredom.

The figure with the cart had been moving fast, but he had been faster. Melting downward into the side of the building, Knell made a mad short work of transition from the exterior wall to the ground itself, and before long he had merged himself into the wheelbarrow itself after transferring from the dirt to one of its wheels, an unseen and unexpected hitchhiker as it was pulled past the treeline and into the forest.

A sense of wariness momentarily passed through the normally obnoxiously confident student, as he realized he had depleted much more energy that he would have liked. A misjudgment in the traveling speed and distance of that wagon left him essentially trapped with whoever this mysterious individual as they traveled further away from the school. He could not sustain his intangibility for much longer, which meant jumping to another surface while staying hidden was an impossibility, and an overcharged smack was certainly off of the table if he should need one.  
And this was on top of knowing self knows what about the hooded one’s potential. They were on an island that specifically housed unnatural freaks after all, this mysterious individual could be capable of anything from changing the flavors of fruits to excreting miniature, weaponized suns. He had gotten himself in over his head. This was a mistake. He could actually be dest-

It was at this moment in the god-fragment’s train of thought that he noticed the wagon had stopped, and the stranger had freed themselves of their hooded cloak. And immediately he realized how much of a fool he had been. It was the physics instructor, the suspicious one with the bug head. She had hurried over and removed a few items from under some kind of cloth atop the wheelbarrow all while mumbling something nonsensical involving a test. And, apparently, this test involved making a small fan-like object hover in front of a box. ‘Quaint’
Knell thought.

Nearing the end of his energy reserves and now certain that he was alone with someone who did not pose much of a physical threat, the shadowed stalker immediately threw stealth to the wind and emerged from the cart in a plume of shadowed mist that was quickly replaced with his his typical hooded visage. Arms folded in an impatient, unamused fashion, and the gaseous mass of his face void of even his typical faux-grin, he prepared to open up with the greatest of all traditions known throughout the halls of Serpens. Bullshit Combat.

“You know, when she told me to make sure you are up to nothing insidious out here, I did not think for a moment that entailed the potential blending of innocent cardboard boxes,” Knell announced almost conversationally as he allowed his gaze to linger on the strange floating fan that seemed to hover intently near the box. “...Should I hazard a guess that something more substantial is going on here?” The question was followed with a low, echo-ey chuckle as he returned his gaze to the mutant teacher. The whole implication was a stretch even compared to his usual bluffs, he was certain the staff trusted him as much as any other student at best, but given the secretive nature of the professor's outing he guessed at the very least it would put her on edge, which could easily lead to some sort of palatable emotion.