Survival Of The Fittest

(Rebekah Hayes: Pregame Start)

The sun hung heavy in the sky over the Salem Woods. It was that perfect time of day where the shadows get a bit longer and the light paints makes things a little bit golden. Rebekah lived for afternoons like these, especially in that perfect slice of early Autumn where the summer heat was dying down, but the leaves hadn’t started to change yet. On days like that, it was easy to believe that the trees were a nation unto themselves, rather than 160-odd acres boxed in by concrete and asphalt. The whole forest seemed magical.

At present, Rebekah was sitting on a rock a little ways off the nature trails, staring quite intently at a shrub. The shrub did not seem particularly magical. In fact, it was rather unimportant. The shrub was just a thing to look at, so that she didn’t look a few feet down and to the left, where the foxes’ hole was. The foxes in Salem Woods were a little less skittish around humans than their truly wild counterparts, but foxes disliked eye contact in general. If they caught her looking directly at them when they emerged, they’d flee back into the hole and escape out the back.

Rebekah liked foxes for a lot of reasons. They had such pretty tails, and they always seemed to be thinking deeply about something. But what Rebekah liked best about foxes was that foxes liked their houses simple. A pair of foxes found some dirt, and they dug down at a 45-degree angle for a few meters. When they’d dug far enough, they hollowed out a little chamber, and that was just… it. Foxes didn’t obsess about crown mouldings or wall-to-wall carpeting, or whether the ensuite could fit a Jacuzzi. They didn’t fret about whether gentrification might happen in the next few decades, or whether a mid-century modern had better resale prospects than a contemporary. They just plopped right down in their little dirt caves, and they were satisfied. Human beings, in Rebekah’s experience, never seemed to have that ability. It was one of many reasons why they would never rank among her top ten favorite animals.

She subtly shifted position on the rock she’d been sitting on, trying to avoid the pins-and-needles feeling she was getting from her hindquarters. A damp patch of moss left a greeny-brown smear on her jeans, which blended in quite nicely with the grass stains which were already there. Hazarding a stealthy glance at her watch, she frowned. Her dad would be expecting an update soon. Foxes were even less keen on ringtones heralding several “where r u???” texts than they were on eye contact.

Noiselessly, she let her hand slide back onto the cool, rough surface of the rock, debating whether she ought to just get up and go. No, not yet. She wanted to see whether the cubs were still around. There were three of them. She’d never bothered giving them names; she didn’t like to put labels on nature’s citizens. But she knew them all the same. She’d watched them gambol and play throughout May and June, nipping and squealing as they tested out their jaws and claws in playful combat. All too soon they’d grown long and lanky, and the scuffles had taken on an earnest edge. Any day now, they’d be gone, cast out of the dirt cave to find their own way in the world. They might try and linger in Salem Woods, but there was only so much territory to go around. By October, they’d have slunk off to the east, towards Lynn Woods and the wide open reserve lands beyond. You couldn’t send “where r u???” texts to foxes. They just left, and never said goodbye.

Her thoughts were interrupted by a small disturbance in her peripheral vision - the tip of a snout, tentatively prodding the late afternoon air. She imagined all of the foxes, mother, father, and the three children, crouched in an orderly queue, waiting for the all clear. Yes, that’s it, she thought. Come on out. It’s safe out here.

-Crnshh!-

The snout vanished.

Rebekah leaned back and groaned, a pained expression on her face. Someone was walking up the trail nearby, and they’d just stepped on a patch of gravel and put her entire afternoon to waste. Well, if she couldn’t spend some time observing foxes, perhaps she’d just have to do a little casual observation of Salem Woods’ human population instead. She slipped off the rock, and decided to try and sneak up a bit closer to see who was coming down the trail.

Angelo Lee: Pregame Start

"-and Adventurer's League rules specifically say no homebrew, anyway," said the voice in Angelo's ear, and he was pretty sure that the rolling of his eyes in response was also audible on the Discord call. He'd been focusing on where he was going and more or less tuning out the tirade; otherwise, the noise of his footsteps would have been the least of Rebekah's volume-related problems.

Archery practice had been called off on short notice due to his coach having some kind of family emergency. Angelo got that, but he still had some pent-up frustrated energy from showing up to practice on time, waiting around for 20 minutes, and only then being told that practice wasn't happening. He had decided to head over to the trails to walk off some of his excess energy instead of going back home right away, and so he'd been pacing around the area for a while, the bag containing his equipment rhythmically bouncing off of his back as he moved. He had gotten caught up in a chat debate while checking Discord on his phone, and the chat had escalated to a voice call; with his headphones in and the noise of several people talking in his ears, he wasn't really paying attention to who or what else might be nearby.

"We're not even officially Adventurer's League, so I don't see why we have to stick to their rules," he chimed in, fiddling with the cord of his earbuds to make sure that the microphone was near his mouth. A glance at his phone screen confirmed that the call was draining his battery fast, and reception out here wasn't that great anyway, but he had to get a word in before he dropped out of the chat. "Like, having to hold concentration is sort of annoying at a table, but doing it in real life sucks. I don't want to have to stop and think in the middle of combat if something distracted me too much to keep Bless going."

"Play something other than paladin, then," one of his guildmates deadpanned.

"Fuck you," Angelo deadpanned back, to a small chorus of giggles. He was about to launch into a spiel on how he ought to get to run more than one concentration spell at a time, because who was actually out here holding concentration on one single spell for an entire hour, but a noise from outside his headphones caught his attention. Or rather, he was just now processing that there had been a noise.

It had sounded kind of like a groan, and though he hadn't seen anyone, Angelo suddenly remembered that he was kind of out in the middle of the woods, and it was entirely possible someone else could have been out here as well, and the mystery person might have fallen down somewhere or gotten hurt in some other way.

"Hang on," he said, and closed the app, shoving his phone into the pocket of his shorts for the moment. He plucked one earbud out, listening for a repeat of the initial noise.

"Hello?"

Rebekah crouched in the shadow between two trees. She narrowed her eyes, squinting warily through the foliage. There was a guy standing in the middle of the trail, looking around. He'd obviously overheard her, but she hadn't been spotted yet, as far as she could tell.

Was this guy lost? Based on the way he was looking around, he seemed like he might be. Most of the trails weren't hard to follow, but it wasn't unusual to find stragglers wandering around after taking a wrong turn or opting for what seemed like a shortcut. If anything, it was more common nowadays. The coronavirus pandemic had created a small community of "amateur birdwatchers," who were really just middle-aged people looking for an excuse to leave the house without having to social distance. They liked to go tromping around the woods, leaving granola bar wrappers and half-full bottles of sunscreen in the shrubbery. And because they were looking for birds, they tended to focus more on what was over their heads than whether the ground at their feet was still a trail or not.

Ordinarily, she'd wait for the lost people to get a little ways ahead, then come walking up the trail behind them and give a cheerful hello, express admiration for what a lovely day it was, and then ask what brought them to the woods. Then she'd helpfully say that why, yes, she had seen some cardinals flitting about, and then give them directions that would invariably lead them back to the nearest parking lot and restroom. But this time, she was hesitating. This wasn't a birdwatcher, she knew that much. They tended to come in groups, because people like that tended to be less interested in watching birds than they were in telling others about all the magnificent birds they'd watched. This guy was young, and clearly by himself.

Rebekah's self-defense instructors had taught her that this was precisely the sort of situation that she ought to avoid - running into a strange man in a remote location where nobody could hear you scream. It didn't get any more textbook than that. She would have been content to follow her amygdala's frantic urgings and slip away, if the guy hadn't chosen that moment to turn slightly. When he did, it allowed her to catch a glimpse of the bag slung over his shoulder. It bore a prominent emblem, which she immediately recognized as the logo of the Salem Archery Club.

Was he a hunter? That would explain why he was out on the fringes, and why he was looking out for the source of the noise - to make sure he was alone. Bow hunting wasn't technically illegal if you were far enough away from houses and roads, but she doubted he'd be licensed. Nobody who'd wear earphones while on a hunting trip was the kind of person who'd take it seriously. Whether he was lost, or just some jerk looking to blow off a little steam by taking potshots at rabbits and chickadees, she didn't know, but it didn't really matter. The possibility that he'd do harm tripped the switch from "flight" to "fight," in a big way.

Technically, animals killing animals was a natural process. Rebekah wouldn't have intervened, say, to stop the foxes from chasing down a rabbit. But predatory animals killed to eat, they did out of necessity. Killing for fun was behavior reserved for assholes and dolphins. If this guy was hunting, he was a predator, pure and simple. And most predators relied on the element of surprise to hunt effectively. If a hunting ground was compromised and became unsafe, they'd abandon it. No better way to shut this guy down permanently than to make it very, very clear that he'd been spotted.

"Hi there!" she called out loudly, stepping onto the path and giving a cheerful wave.

For all Rebekah knew, he was just some guy. In that case, they'd have a pleasant conversation about the weather. But if he was a hunter and simply being identified wasn't enough to derail his plans... Well, there was always the small canister of bear spray in her pocket.

There was a silence that stretched on a little too long for Angelo to be comfortable with it. The sounds of birds and insects and the rustling of foliage went unbroken and unconcerned, but he was sure he'd heard something else that sounded a lot more human. He wasn't wild about the idea of venturing off the path and searching through the underbrush for someone that might have fallen and hurt themselves, or whatever else could have inspired them to make a weird noise.

He was so focused on listening that when Rebekah actually went and popped out of the bushes with a cheery greeting, he jumped. "Oh- hey," he stammered a little awkwardly, taking a minute to relax when he realized it was just someone from school. They'd never really talked, but he did recognize her. He pulled his other earbud out and let the cord drape around his neck instead.

"I was wondering if anyone else was out here. I heard some kind of weird noise. Was that you?" She didn't look hurt or anything, but Angelo guessed she could have been bitten by a... bug, or snake, or something. Did they have snakes in Massachusetts? He couldn't remember ever coming across any just out in the wild, but he didn't spend that much time actually out in the woods.

Shifting to hike the strap of his archery bag back up on his shoulder where it had started to slide down, Angelo took a few steps to close the distance between himself and Rebekah so that they wouldn't be shouting across the trail at each other. Animals and people who did habitually spend their time in the woods didn't tend to like that, he had learned. "What's up?"

Rebekah maintained her pleasant smile, but didn't fail to notice the way he adjusted the strap of his bag.

She couldn't be sure if she'd seen the guy before. He looked about her age, with a muscular build and long, unkempt black hair. The earring he wore looked distinctive, and she thought maybe she'd seen it somewhere at school. It was hard to say. There were a lot of humans at Endecott, and most of them tended to dislike being observed too closely. She was getting a good view of this one, though, seeing as he was steadily closing the distance between them.

Ugh. She just knew she was going to have to give an account of this encounter later over dinner.  Her dad would ask. He always did, when he knew she'd been out wandering. Lying about it was out of the question - she'd never had the knack for it, and her dad could read her like a book. It was gonna be a real headache to spin "I was approached in an isolated location by a strange male I was pretty sure was carrying a deadly weapon" in a way that wouldn't cause problems. This guy was definitely going to ruin her day, even if he wasn't out here to commit recreational murder.  And speaking of that...

"You said you heard a noise? Could've come from anywhere, I guess. Lots of people use these trails this time of year." She leaned on the word "lots" a bit, to emphasize just how ill-suited these very crowded woods were for hunting.  "I'm just out for a walk, myself. How about you? Out for a hike, or...?"

"Eh, kind of. Archery practice got canceled, so I figured if I was already out here, might as well go for a walk." Angelo shifted the bag a bit more, pulling it by the strap across his front, so that Rebekah could see the Salem Archery Club logo on its side.

Her explanation didn't really make sense to him. He hadn't seen anyone else out here yet. He guessed that didn't make it impossible that a ton of people could be out and about right now, but it hadn't seemed like the case to him. "You didn't hear it? It sounded like it was off that way." Angelo gestured off the trail and into the brush, where he was fairly sure that the groan had come from. He didn't see anyone else over there, and no other noise had followed, but Rebekah wasn't claiming ownership of the original sound.

Turning back to Rebekah, he raised an eyebrow at her. "I think I'm going to go check it out. You want to stay here, or...?" He trailed off in the same way that she had done with her question to him.

Geez, what was with this kid?

Brandishing his weapon bag, closing in on her personal space, asking her to come deeper into the woods on a flimsy pretext - this was all classic predator behavior. In SEPS they taught all kinds of ways to recognize dangerous situations, and this guy might as well have been reading off a checklist, ticking all the boxes as he went.

It wasn't like she wanted to beat him up. There was a human woman called Shirley Frobisher who attended some of the same Impact self-defense seminars that Rebekah did, and without fail, every single session she would come in bragging about how she'd verbally judo-ed an individual for aggressing on her personal space, or frightened off a would-be marauder who'd been acting threatening. She always got applause for these stories. Rebekah did always make sure to clap with the rest, because things did happen, and women did get attacked out nowhere, and it was important to support one another. It was possible that Shirley Frobisher really was living in perpetual danger. But there was always a tiny, awful part of her that wondered if maybe, just maybe, some of Shirley Frobisher's "aggressors" were just trying to squeeze past her on the sidewalk. She'd seen the glances that some of the other women shared whenever Shirley Frobisher started to speak, and the last thing on earth that Rebekah wanted was to be the cause of those glances. She did not want to go to SEPS and tell the story of the time she beat up a bow-and-arrow wielding maniac who tried to lure her into the bushes, she really didn't. What's more, the thought of being clapped for made her want to crawl into a hole and hibernate until Spring.

But, at the same time, this kid really wasn't giving her a lot of options here. She was gonna have to verbal judo him, at the very least. Otherwise she'd have to go to Impact a few more times. They didn't even have training for how to defend yourself against a bow and arrow, because nobody went around marauding women with those. But thanks to this freakin' kid, now they'd probably have to add it. And to top it all off, now he was heading towards her foxes' burrow. Even if he wasn't a hunter, and even if he didn't intend to do anything, she still didn't want him anywhere near them. For all she knew, he'd come back another day, try to check out the den himself, and scare the daylights out of the poor foxes. Then she'd never be able to watch them again.

Rebekah squared her shoulders, stretching a bit to draw herself up to her full height. This was a common defense against predators - the bigger you were, the less confident they'd be about eating you. "Hold it." She held up a hand, like she was a police officer stopping traffic. "You shouldn't wander off the trails. There could be wild animals out there, or a crazy homeless guy. If you're really that worried about it, we can just phone the parks office and get them to check it out."

Her other hand slowly inched towards her pocket, and the small orange canister therein. Just in case.

((Russell ‘Fitz’ Fitzroy continued from Searching For America's Next Annabelle.))

A rustling sound.

A sigh, and another rustling noise.

Fitz half-stumbled out of the bushes, wading awkwardly to avoid getting his feet stuck in the branches and shrubs nearby. In one hand, he held a small electronic device – an EVP recorder to be precise. He brushed some twigs out of his hair – leftovers after dropping the EVP recorder in a bush – and took a couple of steps forward before even properly registering that there were other people there.

He blinked sleepily at the other two. Uh… cheerleader, forest cheerleader… Rebecca? No, it had a k in it… And… archery, started with the same letter. Andy. No, Angelo. Neither were really in his circle, but he was… aware of them?

“Oh. Hello,” Fitz said mildly, still holding the recorder up like he was conducting an interview. Then he turned around, staring absently into the forest, before he said, in perhaps a slightly quieter tone than he’d normally use, “Have you seen or heard any shenanigans?”

Were they the noise he’d been following? Darn. They weren’t ghosts. He’d seen them at school. He was fairly sure he’d wandered to the wrong hill of the woods, anyway. He'd meant to stick to his initial trail, but he'd heard something, and then heard another something, and... well, ten somethings later here he was.

Also, one of them had archery equipment and the other had... some kind of orange canister very close to her hand, so maybe this was a woods fight.

Fitz turned his head slightly the way he'd came, and half-heartedly gestured that way as if to ask silently if he should leave.

Rebekah was a few inches taller than Angelo. Not a lot, and thanks to her posture, he didn't really notice it until she straightened up. When she did that, though, he sensed a distinct shift in the dynamic of their conversation. He wasn't the kind of person who got in actual fights (Had he mentioned that Rebekah was still a few inches taller than him while not being extremely tall herself?) but he'd been in plenty of confrontations both playful and serious, and he could tell when someone was getting primed for a fight. Half-consciously, he started to tense in turn, unsure just what was going on, but feeling that things were about to go south.

And then all the tension deflated like a particularly wet fart as Fitz stumbled out of the trees like the world's scrawniest bigfoot.

Angelo still started in surprise, clutching at the strap of his archery bag with both hands for lack of anything better to do with them. After realizing that it was, in fact, just another one of his classmates and not a bigfoot with mange, he sighed and ran both hands through his hair, ruffling it further from its already messy usual state.

"Man, the only shenanigan I see around here is whatever you're doing. How many other people are just hanging out in the woods like that's a thing?" He waved one hand in the direction that Fitz had just come from before planting his hand on his hip. He glanced back in Rebekah's direction with a raised eyebrow. Were they together? It didn't seem like it, but Fitz was kind of really weird, so Angelo felt that he couldn't really discount anything with him involved.

Maybe they were like... a thing? A thing Rebekah didn't want her cheerleader friends to know about, or something? That might make marginally more sense than several unrelated people just stomping around in the same area of woods, but it also raised further, weirder questions about why Fitz was carrying what looked like a tape recorder.

Angelo decided he wasn't going to follow that train of thought any further.

"...Was that you over there making weird noises, then?"

And just like that, all of the tension faded away. Another human, one she knew from school, was here, which officially turned this from a potential marauding to something more akin to a social outing - no need to become the next Shirley Frobisher. Rebekah's fingers drifted away from the canister, and she subtly eased back into her regular posture. Not that she'd have had much luck trying to use a defensive display to ward off a guy like Fitz, anyway - he was at least half a foot taller than she was, and practically towered over the other boy.

She looked back at the first boy, trying to put two and two together. The way Fitz talked to him made them seem vaguely familiar. Did this guy also go to Endecott? She didn't recall seeing him around, but it was a big enough school that she could have overlooked him. But if so, it was a very good thing that Fitz had interrupted before she'd pulled out the canister. Rebekah didn't like being singled out for attention, and bear-spraying a fellow student was the kind of thing that tended to attract notice.

But, all of that aside, there were still foxes out there trying to live their best lives, and now there were two teenage boys tromping around near their den. She'd have to think of some way of diverting them. She turned to the first boy, and gestured at Fitz. "I did say that there were a lot of people out on these trails, didn't I? That was probably the noise you heard. Sound can get carried in some pretty weird ways out in the woods."

“To be fair, I got lost. But you’re also here. Why am I the weird one for being here?” Fitz asked Angelo mildly, keeping quiet as possible. He wasn’t the one bringing archery equipment to the woods in the twenty-first century.

The tension in the air seemed to have evaporated almost as soon as Fitz noticed it. That was… good? Probably. Fitz wouldn’t be good at stopping a fight. He was primarily made out of bones.

“I don’t think so. I was trying to be quiet, so I didn’t scare any ghosts.” Fitz turned in a circle, holding out the recorder to the thin air. Just in case. He had one earpiece dangling out of his ear, to listen for noises on the spot, but that required a lot of interpretation. “Weird noises… I could rewind this, but if I do I’m sure that’s when ghost noises would kick in. Murphy’s Law.” He looked at Rebekah. “You saw people making the noises? Like… fleshy people?”

Hmm. There was a noise that was coming through on his still-running recorder. Could have been breathing, or scratching. It stopped almost as soon as he noticed it. But that could be a lot of things. He should have picked somewhere indoors for hunting, but any undiscovered witch-hunt victims weren’t going to find themselves.

"I'm on the trail," Angelo pointed out. He wasn't particularly looking to get in an argument, but it merited saying. Fitz's near-whisper made him aware of how loud his own voice was, though, and he made a token attempt to moderate his volume.

Fitz was one of those people that Angelo had long ago decided to just not really question most of the time. He was really weird, but he wasn't hurting anyone. Case in point, this ghost thing. Angelo was no ghost expert, but a surprisingly populated walking trail in the middle of the day didn't seem like ideal ghost real estate. But whatever.

He rubbed the back of his neck, rolling his head side to side to loosen some of the tension that had gathered there. "I didn't see anything, I was just walking along and heard like, someone groaning or something. I figured maybe somebody had, I dunno, fallen down somewhere off the trail. But it hasn't happened again, so..." He trailed off and shrugged.

There was always the chance that somebody was hurt somewhere out there, and the three of them were standing around like a bunch of chucklefucks while some person was off dying in the woods. Amazing Survival Story: I Laid Among The Trees For 27 Hours While Three Teens Stood Around And Talked About Ghosts 15 Feet Away. That was gonna be the headline.

"I might go take a look still," he said finally. At this point, he didn't particularly want either Rebekah or Fitz to accompany him, but he left the implied offer open. It was to ease his own mind more than anything. He didn't like wondering.

Ah, crud. The shorter human was heading for the woods again, and even if he didn't find anything, that wouldn't necessarily be enough to dissuade Fitz from tagging along in search of spooky noises. The only thing worse than one teenage boy tromping around the foxes' den was two teenage boys doing it. There was only one solution that came to mind. She'd have to use eyespots.

Eyespots, as even the most casual of lepidopterists would know, are large circular markings founds on the wings of certain species of butterflies and moths. These markings closely resembled the large, keen eyes of a predatory bird species. When threatened, the insect would simply flare its wings to create the illusion of an oncoming predator in the immediate vicinity, confusing the predator long enough to make a clean getaway. There was a tactic in verbal judo that relied on the same principle - saying something odd or unexpected to an aggressor could disrupt their train of thought, and de-escalate a surprising number of situations.

But what could she say? She'd have to convince one guy that there was nobody in danger, and convince the other one that there was some perfectly mundane, non-ghostly explanation for why disembodied moans were going on in the woods, and give both of them a good reason to lose all interest in investigating the area.

"I made the noise," she confessed. She crossed her arms and looked down at the dirt. "I was out walking around, and I tripped over a rock. I didn't say anything before because I was pretty embarrassed. Besides, people aren't really supposed to be in that area of the park. My dad works for the parks service, and if he knew I was out there or letting other people go out there, then I'd probably get in trouble."

It wasn't a total lie, but it wasn't the truth either. With any luck it'd be enough to convince the two of them to abandon The Great Disembodied Groan Caper, at least. She decided to sweeten the pot, and turned to the one who seemed more malleable.

"But you said you were looking for ghosts, right? There are some areas of this forest that get pretty spooky... if you want, I can show you some of the places where weird stuff happens."

...Hmm.

Hmhmhmmmm.

Between the vaguely hostile vibe he’d walked in on and her trying to lead them away from the noise… it all felt a little sneaky. Who’d really be embarrassed about tripping? People tripped all the time. Of course, being embarrassed in general was a wasted effort.

Fitz slowly moved the EVP in that direction. He thought he was picking up scratching, but that could be anything. The woods were, honestly, kind of noisy when amplified like this.

“Well, if you say it’s nothing then it’s probably nothing,” Fitz said mildly as he moved the EVP back to Rebekah.

Either it was something harmless but more embarrassing – and Fitz wasn’t going to expose Rebekah if that was the case, it was her business – or Rebekah was possibly committing human sacrifice with a cult in the woods. Fitz was willing to die to see a ghost, but not so much if it was just a casual murderous cult. Anything real important would be behind locked doors or a harder-to-reach wood, and not relying on one teenaged girl to deflect visitors.

Okay, the whole murder cult thing was unlikely anyway. But just in case, helping to steer Angelo away from his potential death was a good idea.

“I’m down to look at other weird places,” Fitz said, nodding. “Angelo, isn’t it? You want to come? Old time ghosts are more affected by arrows, you know. It doesn’t hurt them, but it’s more familiar to them than modern guns, so they’re more likely to treat the weapon with respect.”

"Um."

Okay, sure, Rebekah's explanation was something Angelo could buy. It made sense as to why she was acting so shifty; he knew the feeling of telling a panic lie and then realizing you were just digging yourself deeper over something that was actually pretty minor. The only thing worse than getting caught somewhere you weren't supposed to be was getting caught by someone you knew, so you couldn't just make the excuse that you were actually not even from around here and in fact you were about to leave the area entirely and would never return.

Not that he'd ever personally done that, or anything.

Anyway, Angelo was all set to accept Rebekah's reasons and move on, and then Fitz went and made stuff weird again, like real weird. Angelo scratched at the back of his neck again, fidgeting as he tried to figure out what the hell you even said to an offer like that. "I'm not, uh. I wasn't out here to shoot, I just had practice and it got canceled. I wasn't planning on actually getting the bow out."

He didn't feel like he needed to explain why it wasn't safe to just go waving a bow and arrows around with other people in the area. It wasn't the same as waving around a gun, but it was still a weapon. There was a certain feeling of power to holding one that Angelo had always been conscious of, and that sense of power had instilled a bit more respect in him for his bow than for any boffer sword he'd gone swinging at a friend in costume. It inspired him to slow down, think, and focus more than usual.

Also, if he got stupid and shot somebody, his coach would instantly materialize and kill him in penance, and then his parents would materialize and lecture his corpse. That was just how that worked.

"But, I mean, if you think they'll respect the club logo, then sure." He didn't have that much to do today, and following Fitz around to see what the hell he got up to in his own time sounded more fun than returning to the argument about club rules that had been unfolding in the Discord. Angelo glanced back over to Rebekah. "Where's the spooky spot?"