The beginning

[lowreaches]

Who: The cast

Where: The Belfry's front yard and parking lot

When: Morning

What: A bus has arrived, empty, causing quite the stir.

The storm fell over the town like a pall, and with it came the fog.  

 

It was a hungry, curious thing.  So thick and wet it licked at your clothes and skin when you stepped out into it, tasting you, and stealing sight and color from the world, leaving it slick and oily.  Shadows festered in its recesses, coiling and dancing beneath it like living things, greedy in the low light.  Above was no better:  the angry thunderheads hung mountainous over the city, spitting rain and blooming with lightning.  Storms were fierce in Sinjoh, and this was no exception, booming and growling its discontent, threatening to shake the bones from bodies.  The rain fell in heavy sheets, gutters and creeks swollen and fast with it.  Little rivers streamed across Blackbell.  It choked the city.  It blinded it.  

 

Maybe that's why no one noticed until it was too late.  

 

Out of that grey, pitiless gloom rose the old (new) crooked Belfry, and beneath it, a mass of children and their beleaguered teachers, their rain slickers and jackets shiny in the rain, whispering and sharing glances among themselves -- those who weren't transfixed on the cloudbursts of red and blues in the fog and the occasional ghostlight that meandered clumsily through it.  Police sirens chirped, sharp against the dull grey fog, and sometimes a walkie would crackle to life.  

 

Worse still were the keen wails as whoever stumbled out of their car up to the police barricade were turned aside, told the news, and lost themselves.

 

Because everyone remembered the cargo ship.

 

Everyone remembered what washed up to shore, only a short few weeks ago.  There were pictures all over the internet:  strange, pale figures.  Motionless.  Their mouths toothless gapes.  Their eyes worse.  Empty.  Nothing staring at nothing.  They were human shaped, but too slack, too soggy, too translucent.  They would burst if they tried to move.  Some had when the authorities had gone to collect them.

 

The bus was submerged in the fog, its bright yellow coloring strange and forbidding now.  Nearly twenty minutes ago it had lurched into the parking lot, and died.  It went still, lights and engines snapping off, and no one had noticed anything amiss -- the steady beat of the rain and growl of thunder drowned out everything else the fog didn't cover -- until a few minutes had gone past and no one had stepped off.  The door had remained shut.  Eventually someone investigated.  Called out and knocked on the side door, frowned into the empty inside.  They managed the door open, and a gentle rush of fetid, dark water spilled out.  Inside, the rows and rows of bus seats were empty.  Just backpacks and toys, even a few pokeballs, sat lonely and abandoned.

 

When the authorities arrived, they found the teachers trying to shoo the children away from the bus, many of them lifting on to tiptoe to try and get a glance inside at the back door, or smashing their faces into the side door.  The first cop car was soon joined by another, and another.  EMTs were called:  a child had fainted.  A barricade was constructed, and some order was restored.

 

Until the first parent arrived.  

 

And then the press.

 

The Belfry hunched over the small circus forming on its parking lot, bell toning with the start of the school day.  Its crooked arches and spindly lengths, occasionally thrown into fierce shadows from a lightning strike, were skeletal in the gloom.  School had been cancelled for the day.   Parents were being called to pick up children.  A line was queuing near the western port of the parking lot.

 

Comments

[pay_day]

No sooner had she joined the mass of students outside than Anastasia's umbrella fwooshed open (collapsible and spheal-patterned, complete with a beige underside; which, she reflected not for the first time, kind of undercut the effect of the pattern, if she herself couldn't see it). She felt like the fog was actually kind of pretty, in its own way, despite being, yes, gloomy and creepy.

Only, it was a bit hard to appreciate thoughts about Sinjoh's aesthetics when this whole... situation was ongoing. Anastasia had taken to shuffling back and forth, near-ish to the front of the crowd, aimlessly. She was as morbidly curious as anyone what was going on with that bus, but at the same time kind of... didn't want to know.

Like being afraid of the dark at night and burying her head under the covers, because even if the monsters (in her closet, under her bed, right behind her) were real, so long as she didn't look at them they might not be.

As usual with such things, her imagination was doing a decent job of filling things in (was that one of this school's buses? was it supposed to have been bringing people to the Belfry today? if so, and nobody was being allowed to look at it... -- but maybe everyone had gotten off already and they were just cancelling classes because of the weather; so long as she didn't know better, there might not be anything really, terribly wrong).

Periodically, she checked her phone--
("school got canceled, i think because of the weather" ; "Do you need a ride home?" ; "idk will msg you when they say something" "message*" "I don't know*" "they want parents to come pick us up. i don't know if they'll have buses for the kids whose parents can't come. there are police here" ; "I'll talk with your father, and one of us will be over as soon as we can. I'll let you know when to expect us." ; "k" "okay*" ; and that had been... several minutes ago, at least, though time felt like it was just stretching on interminably)
--but mostly she shivered and rubbed her arms for warmth. She was really not dressed for the chill or the moisture, only a light and medium-sleeved cardigan warn over her regular clothes. The chill and the damp did at least provide a distraction from the other aspects of the situation, it wasn't nearly enough of one, not with that bus just... looming there.

[sail_away]

It got maybe a little more chilled after a moment as one of the other kids drew nearer. Shizuka's Amaura was out in the open, the girl having it walking next to her right about then like an old family friend. It was an unspoken sign of just how nervous she was that it was out unless one of the adults told her to put it away. She didn't have it out at school almost ever, knowing that they were still too young to really be out on their own. But, it was comforting to have the pokemon close...

Even if it was basically like having the refrigerator door open near you.

She walked up closer, looking at Anastasia and frowning. "Are you alright. Is anyone missing from class?" she asked, keeping her voice from sounding as nervous as possible. Of course, she didn't mean whatever was going on with the bus. She was talking about the other people in their class, of course, not the bus up ahead. She didn't want to sound callous, but she was a bit more concerned about their immediate classmates.

[pay_day]

A particularly vigorous shiver arrested Anastasia's back-and-forthing, and no sooner had she finished giving her arms another brisk rub-down (tucking her umbrella between her arm and torso to keep it more-or-less in place) than Shizuka was upon her. "Oh, um..." the girl's Amaura got a somewhat perplexed look, but Ana quickly returned to the question. "I don't think so?" And, at that, she glanced around, looking for familiar faces... though not really to the point of trying to tally them up.

"Though I haven't actually checked. Oh, and yeah, I'm, um. I'm doing fine. A bit cold, but..." she shrugs, and forces an almost-smile... and promptly spoils it by gnawing at her lip. "Are you? Doing alright, that is?"

She kept her volume on the low side of conversational, hushed out of a sense of... well, really nothing in particular. It just would have felt somehow wrong not to, what with the overall... atmosphere.

[phasephoros]

Emme really doesn't like the look of that bus. It scared her, and so it's not something she wants to think about or even look at. Anastasia's umbrella is certainly something that catches her eye, cute in a way that it almost offsets the dark grey sheets of rain. Almost. Emme's own umbrella isn't patterned or themed, but plainly in sight on the side of her schoolbag meant for a water bottle, and this she pretends doesn't exist as she invites herself under the cover Anastasia's umbrella provides, bumping shoulders with the other girl with a wide grin that Emme hopes can convey the 'Don't worry! It'll be alright!' she can't come to believe herself.

"We finally get a day off from school, and all I want to do is go back to bed after being drenched in this rain!" She gives Anastasia a little more space at that, half in and half out under the umbrella, not really minding because it's not like she can get any more soaked. Better standing outside than drowning in the school bus... Ugh, her stomach clenches just remembering the glimpse of the when the door opened, the dark liquid spreading across the ground like it'd been bled out. It makes her feel sick, and all the more determined to get her mind off it. "Curled up under the sheets— and doesn't hot soup sound good right about now?"

[pay_day]

Emme's abrupt appearance elicited a startled "Ah!", and the shoulder-bump sent her momentary wobbling (she'd had her feet pressed close together, trying to huddle in on herself to conserve heat)--but, quickly enough she found her balance once more, and found herself flashing a grin back at the new arrival, albeit one that was awkward (on account of Emme's rather... assertive arrival) in addition to being rather forced (on account of the circumstances in general).

"Um--hi." While Emme's almost belligerent friendliness bordered on off-putting... after a few moments for Ana to regain her composure, it was a welcome enough diversion from.... other things, that she found herself not minding terribly much. "Ah, yeah, that..." another shiver, "That sounds pretty great about now. Ugh, it would've been nice if they could've canceled classes before we got all the way out here, yanno?"

It was an absurd sentiment, of course, with the rather obvious reason for the abrupt change of schedule hardly a stone's throw away from them--but that was sort of the point. Just proactively ignore it until it goes away.

[sail_away]

Uncle Ueda would probably be one of the last ones here today. It wasn't because he didn't care, but really because he was caught in the middle of work. That was fine. Shizuka had been taking care of herself for a long time for the most part, and so she wasn't really worried about all that. All he cared about first was that she was ok and safe, and once she'd talked to him on the phone to let him know, he had said he'd be on the way.

Covered head to toe in a rain slicker, she watched what was going on with far too much curiosity right now. She wanted to know what had happened. She'd heard about the rumors in the past, and now the bus had appeared but not the kids? She'd known people on that bus after all, and she wanted to know where they were, if everyone was ok, and when she was sure that none of that was known, she wanted to know why.

At the same time, she wasn't going to ask or start pestering the adults about it. instead, she stared curiously at the front of the crowd, watching away and trying not to look too obvious about her curiosity. One hand idly rested on her Amaura, Peanut, fingers taking comfort from their chilled head. Her eyes stared on and she tried to decide how to investigate what was happening.

...but under the adults' watchful eyes, she was damned sure that wasn't going to be happening today.

[phasephoros]

"Worried?" Emme guesses, popping up behind Shizuka with her hands clasped behind her back without an umbrella to hold, knowing full well it's her own worries that she's projecting, because that look she'd caught in Shizuka's was more of curiosity than concern. "You know," she continues as she steps properly to Shizuka's side, content to make idle chatter on her own, nonstop, just short of breathless. "I bet I'm tall enough to see inside the windows if I can just get close enough. But they had to go block it all off, huh? I wonder if anyone's got a Luxray we could borrow. Don't they have something like X-ray vision?"

[sail_away]

She had to think about it for a second before nodding. She was pretty sure that, yes indeed, they had x-ray vision. Or at least, maybe she'd heard a rumor about that at some point? She wasn't going to counter it though right then, simply looking back at Emme and frowning a bit.

"I know i look curious, but I'm not sure that we want to actually see what's inside the bus," she admitted, shaking her head. Besides, getting too close was just going to get the adults on their cases. This was a mystery for tomorrow.

[foxfeathers]

Rhyssa was quiet in the rain, her Rowlet, Fallon, had decided to become an impromptu umbrella for all that his wings weren't remotely big enough. She let him help anyway as she dug into her bag for her umbrella. It was black, nondescript, but on its underside it was blue and populated by bird pokemon flying through a blue sky background. It was also large enough to fit a few more people once she got it open. Kali, her Eevee, had managed to carefully drape herself around Rhyssa's neck in the most impossible of ways. Honestly, it looked like she had somehow acquired an Eevee as a scarf.

She was, however, warmer.

"Come on under here where it's dry," Rhyssa called as she watched the commotion with interest, snagging elbows and hands when she could. Her mother wasn't coming, she knew that already. She'd have to walk home or get a ride. "I wonder if they'll let me walk home or if I'm going to have to beg a ride with someone. My mother's been at a conference somewhere for days. Just me in the house."

She paused for a moment to consider the scene.

"I guess that bus is probably a mess. Figures it'd come here, this place already looks like someone plucked it from a horror novel." She craned her head back toward the school and let out a huff. "It could use some new paint and someone to plant a friendly garden."

[sail_away]

She was fine in her slicker, thank you very much Rhyssa. But, when she got her arm snagged like that, she was pulled in close to the Eevee wrapped girl, her own Amaura huddling down between her legs. The pokemon shook itself 'dry,' little bits of frozen water going in every direction instead of droplets of water. The air around the fossil was just a bit colder always, not that Shizuka ever seemed to mind.

She looked over at her and shrugged before shaking her head. "I never really thought about it like that. It doesn't scare me, after all." Yeah, well, she always liked to behave like she wasn't scared of anything at all. But, something else was nagging at her more the longer that she thought about it, right up until the point that she frowned.

"You're coming over to my place for dinner tonight. You know that, right?" No, there wasn't fear there, but it seemed like a bad idea for someone to go somewhere alone tonight, not after all this.

[foxfeathers]

"Oh, you've an Amaura! That's wonderful, I've never seen one up close before. My father was always promising me a good look. Hello, there!" Rhyssa waved a little and smiled at the fossil pokemon.

With the invitation, she looked up, delighted.

"If you're sure it's alright, I'd be glad for the company. My mom does Pokemon research, so she's often pretty far afield most of the time," Rhyssa said with a slight shrug as if it didn't matter too much. "She was going to leave a Nosepass to take care of things at home but I talked her out of it."

Fallon flapped his wings and resettled on her head as she gestured. Nosepass were kinda creepy looking with all their, well, noses, but incredibly efficient. Fantastic for security reasons as well.

[phasephoros]

The moment Rhyssa's umbrella is out, Emme gratefully takes advantage of the refuge, stopping just long enough to wring the rain out of her hair before settling in underneath the cover. She laughs a little— a tug of envy at the Eevee soft around Rhyssa's neck, then something of sadness when she hears the other girl will likely go home to an empty house. Her own parents are on the way, probably, maybe after they've secured their plants and trees against the storm, but for now, Emme takes what comfort she can get with her classmates from school.

"More like you'll be swimming home, if the rain keeps up any longer," she says, peeking out beneath the umbrella, only to whip her head back in when she's met with nothing more unexpected than a face-full of water. "It'd probably wash away any paint or seeds we plan too— it's always like that here! Temperamental weather... Rayquaza's sure slacking!" She shakes a fist up at the sky, more theatrical than serious. "Come on up there, get it under control!"

[foxfeathers]

"It certainly isn't the best weather, much colder than in Alola," Rhyssa nods, making a face. Fallon peers down at her, his face rotating as he lets out a questioning sound. She scratches his neck with a soft laugh and shakes her head.

"Of course it has to rain," she says after a moment. "That only makes that bus even creepier. I wish they'd tell us something more but I guess that'll wait until they actually know anything. I mean, it's a bus and it was clearly moving, so where are the kids? The driver?"

She wrinkles her nose.

"...the rain stopping would be really nice." The soft, whispered pretty please was added on like maybe she thought Rayquaza just might be listening, theatrics or not.

[phasephoros]

If she had known school would be canceled for the day, Emme never would have gotten out of bed. She's here now though, huddled away from the crowd and closer to the school building where she can see everyone without a mess of umbrellas and elbows jutting in her face, so all she can do is wait. Not for her parents to come— she hadn't called them, not yet, and doesn't especially plan to until the crowd of students thins out to nearly nothing— nor for the rain to lighten enough that her Pokemon wouldn't stomp her half to death for sending them out in the rain, her unwilling to drown her Mareep or Ponyta in exchange for companionship.

Instead, she tries to find comfort in others, a strained "Morning!" contrary to the heavy mood, to her classmates and their Pokemon. "What do you think happened?" she asks, when she can no longer pretend the bus isn't what holds the other students captive. Or she'd gripe a little, with a "I wish they close a clearer day to cancel school!" as she holds her hands over her forehead, shielding her eyes from the rain in lieu of an umbrella, which she has tucked away in her schoolbag and hadn't bothered to unfurl. "They should at least let everyone wait inside," she'd say, taking to stomping through puddles in agitation the longer the wait drags on, "instead of outside in the rain and all this noise."

Needless to say, she's worried. Anyone who knows her, knows she talks the more she's worried, trying to fill in the silence to keep thoughts at bay.

[gingernaps]

The kids huddled in the rain demonstrated a whole variety of reactions to tragedy. Cookie was hardly the only one staring silent into the fog, listening to the rain on her umbrella, nor the only one whose transfixed gaze contained within it a note of curiousity that was destined for the time to go unsatisfied. She really only looked worried when she looked down to her phone, running her thumb through through the droplets on its glassy screen. It took a few anxious swipes through the wet to pick up the call, but her voice was calm when she finally did.

"Hi, mom. I'm alright. No, it's okay. You don't have to. I'm alright. I promise I'm alright."

She spotted Emme too late to evade either greetings or questions, but nodded and gestured to the phone in her hand. With her classmate so close, she mumbled into the receiver.

"It's okay. I'll call back soon. Love you."

The phone went silent and vanished into one of the expansive pockets of Cookie's hoodie. In it's place came a beat-up pack of gum, which she proffered after taking one for herself and chewing thoughtfully.

"Yeah... but this is better than sitting and waiting to hear what's going on," she concluded. Then she looked Emme up and down with a small frown. Her umbrella was too small for two.

"Don't you have an umbrella?"

[phasephoros]

The whole situation made her feel a bit sick to her stomach, otherwise she'd happily take the stick of gum. As such, she refuses with a little shake of her head, reasoning that she wouldn't be able to chew and talk at the same time, it's not because she's that scared or anything. The head shake triggers a shiver that ran down her spine, which she hides by stretching her arms over her head and out to the sides as if the arc could stand in for an umbrella. It can't. The rain still falls through.

"It's too late now for me to get out an umbrella, so there's no point," she says, shrugging water off her shoulders. "I'll just wring everything out before my parents get here. You aren't going home with your mom?" she asks, because of course she was listening in, even through her barrage of questions before. "How're you getting back?"

[azraelschild]

The pale blue light washed over his pallid face, a bright flicker beneath the encumbering mouth of an umbrella far too large for the boy’s size. The phone’s screen faded, and with it the light went, retreating from the umbrella’s curved spines, the pitch fabric reverberating with the rhythmic tap of pummeling rain. Poe loomed tall, black coat embracing his lanky frame. He could feel his warm breath sink into the raised collar, his fingers retreating behind long sleeves.

It would be a long walk home, too long of a walk. Hours, perhaps. His head lowered, a sleepy nod as he watched the water pool about his shoes in the midst of a haze. Well, there wasn’t much to be done now, was there? Mom and dad were working, surely there would be arrangements for getting everyone home. All that was left to do was wait.

Poe gave a small shrug, propping the umbrella just a little higher into the air, an invitation for anyone who couldn’t get dry. It was father’s, and therefore could easily shield at least four miniature humans. He gave a small wince as a drop slithered into the back of his collar, slipping down his neck. Ah well, it’d be done with soon enough. Home was waiting, warm and inviting, and stocked to the brim with hot cocoa mix. He could wait.

[hexalogical]

"May I join you, my umbrella was snatched away by the wind." Even in a time like this Belladonna still spoke slowly and precisely. She moved under the edge of Poe's umbrella, half under, but half holding back before she got permission to step under the umbrella's shelter. Her own 'umbrella' had been more of a frilly acessory than something to keep the rain off and it had been pulled from her hands within moments of going outside. But it had looked quite dramatic flying away in the wind so Belladonna didn't mind.

Unlike many of the other children she seemed entirely calm about what has happening. She hadn't messaged her parents, they weren't fans of texting and if she called they would have only rushed down to see for themselves. The only sign one might get that she was at all unsettled was from her pacham that she was holding tightly in her arms like a toy bear, usually she kept him in his ball, and usually he was a boisterous force of nature when out of it. But now he was simply leaning his head on her arm comfortingly.

She looked at Poe with an empty expression on her face. "Are you afraid?"

[sail_away]

"Hey, you doing alright?" Shizuka slipped up and behind him, the chill growing worse as her Amaura drew near behind her. It wasn't freezing, but it was always a little cooler around the big fossil pokemon. At this point, she was deciding it was a good idea to check on everyone, to make sure that there weren't any problems. Someone had to do the whole 'checking on the class' thing, after all.

"It's a little crazy, isn't it?" Everything was. For once, her usual cynicism was kind of at a loss for anything intelligent to say. What did you say about this?

[phasephoros]

Emme had been hopping from under umbrella to umbrella, exchanging a few words here and there until a conversation came to a natural end or otherwise a parent finally showed up to take their child home. Poe's umbrella is her latest refuge, one she slips under without so much of a glance as if it were nothing more than an overhanging of a building, shelter meant to be shared.

"Hey, everything okay under here?" she asks, catching the wince but not its cause. She liked rain, normally, but not storms. Not the thunder that came with it, nor the muddy trails. She can't wait to go home. "If I'd known this was going to happen, I'd take my dad's Seedot this morning and have it do Sunny Day. Maybe I should call him back and ask him to bring the little guy..."

[heart_swap]

Not for the first time, she found herself browsing back to the forums.

It wasn't one of the official news articles, the ones where the pictures were somewhat tasteful and respectful. That almost felt more wrong than the crazy shit, the forum pages dedicated to conspiracies and monster stories and the big grainy photos of the swollen, veiny water balloon people with their big toothless mouths. The accusations of photoshopping. The increasingly hostile arguments over whether or not these were aliens. It felt more wrong to act like it was normal, to report on it like it were a celebrity scandal or a house fire or a feel-good story about a litter of skitties.

'Some bus driver drinking on the job', she'd told her friends in Kanto when they asked after the news reports on the Belfry, and it had sounded as wrong then as the calm, respectful reports on the Blackbell Hound's webpage.

She was taller than the others, able to look over the shoulders of the younger children and through the windows without much effort. 'No way they're human,' read one of the comments in the thread on her phone. 'Look at them.'

The bag on the seat was discoloured and waterlogged, but the characters on it were still easy enough to recognise. What kind of alien would use a Teddiursa Friends backpack?

The click of her phone drew her out of her trance. She'd barely even taken notice of herself turning the camera app on until the photo was there, on the screen, looking offensively normal. Just an old bag. Just a broken games system. Just some nasty-looking pokeballs. She shoved her phone into her pocket before a teacher should catch her and confiscate it and allowed herself, with a little less resistance than the younger kids, to be shepherded away.

For a moment, anyway.

She didn't keep Shuppet out of his pokeball as a habit, but she'd let him out today. Raury's Gastly had been finding its way into her bag a little too regularly over the last few days, and a guard couldn't hurt. But Shuppet didn't follow her when she was led away from the bus, and she found herself having to wander back to find him. He wasn't quite visible through the window, not as himself, but the toys scattered around the bus moved as he flitted between them excitedly, never quite finding purchase (none of them, after all, were discarded, just left behind) but gleeful all the same. A waterlogged, mouldy teddy bear waved its half-detatched arm at her. It would have been sweet if it wasn't just a little horrifying.

[phasephoros]

'Hey, the teachers said we're supposed to stay away!' is what Emme would have shouted out across the parking lot as she sloshed her way towards the bus, but she has to save it until she gets close enough if she wanted to be heard over the torrent of rain. With her arms folded over her head as an ineffective umbrella, she feels smaller than usual, uncharacteristically quiet save for the wet splash of footsteps as she picks her way over towards the other student. An older student, maybe one who could tell her what's going on, a better chance than asking a teacher would be.

She's not quite tall enough to see inside the windows with any comfort without jumping, but Emme doesn't need to see inside to catch the movement reflecting off the panes of glass, a slight but clear shift away from the darkness that a yelp escapes her lips before she can catch herself. Both hands slap over her mouth to stifle the scream, and then quickly lower so she can hiss out, "What was that!? I could've sworn something moved in there!"

[tintedlens]

It was times like these-alright, maybe it was all times-when Leo found himself gravitating to those who, like him, stood out. Not that he had any reason to truly stand out, but with how often he talked about what things were like where he 'grew up,' (as though he was remotely close to done growing up yet,) there was no forgetting that he started with their school only this year after moving from Kalos. And since he'd had no luck making friends yet, Leo usually found himself simply gravitating towards people that stuck out to him more than the others.

Enter Marron, of course. At sixteen, she stood out not only for her age but was often quite literally the tallest other than the teachers in any given group. And while Leo could be dense at times, he realized that she wasn't exactly close with the rest of their class, either, though her reason was far more obvious than his own. When she'd wandered away from the crowd, Leo had ducked out of the group as well, considering his mother wouldn't actually be able to come get him for half an hour. Not wanting to disrupt whatever had her attention right away, at least, he hung back slightly, curiosity the driving force in following her to begin with.

At least, it was until he saw the broken, beaten toy waving at them. Well, probably at her-but in Leo's eyes, it was waving at the two together, and he was terrified. "W-w-what's that? I thought they said it was empty!" There had to be something very much wrong with the bus-a ghost simply possessing the toy not having occurred to Leo- for that bear to be waving.

[velovoid]

Alexander had wasted no time rushing to the barrier, heedless of the stern warnings from the uniformed adults around him. As long as he didn't cross the barrier, he was fine, right? A sound line of reasoning, as far as he's concerned, and one he puts to the test as he tempts gravity by leaning as far over the barrier as he dares, phone in hand, taking snap after snap to upload to social media.

Does he look a little too excited by all this? Absolutely. Of the downsides to frequent travel, missing out on local events is not usually high ranked. He had, however, missed the ship. That had been a sticking point for him; sure, he'd seen the pictures. -Everyone- had seen the pictures. This time around he wanted to be the one taking them.

And so, he leans a little further in. Just enough to cause him to wobble, teetering ever closer to losing his balance, and oblivious to everyone else around him,

[sail_away]

"You're going to fall if you're not careful." The comment came from a young girl not far away from him, who was looking on with equal curiosity at the bus. She, however, wasn't actually trying to mess with the barrier, figuring it was a better idea not to get herself in trouble just to sate her curiosity.

She watched Alexander quietly, otherwise, a faint chill in the air surrounding her from her Amaura, who stood next to her. Rain slicker covered in moisture, she waited for the inevitable, either for him to fall or step back. Hopefully the latter, but she was really expecting the former.