Dyschromatic Rose Blossoms(O)

[Eunice]

"zip," went the zipper on the dark green traveler's backpack. The black-haired young woman looked around the well-lit room, and stepped quickly towards her desk, taking her favourite hair clip with a green, butterfly-shaped ornament. She swiftly gathered her rather unkempt hair in her hand and clipped it behind her head, sighing lightly. She took her backpack and proceeded to the door, switching the lights off as she went out of the room, and locked it.

Subtle blue rays of light illuminated the corridors of the majestic castle as Eunice, with her usual green get-up, walked quickly towards the staircase, heading out. Her backpack rocked slightly up and down, following the rhythm of her quick-paced steps. She raced down the stairs as fast as she could. "If I don't hurry, I'll miss the bats" she thought.

She reached the ground floor and marched towards the main gate of the castle. She took a tiny notepad from her pants' pocket and flipped through the pages. "hmm... bats' flying formation, foxes if I can find some... hmm, flower buds, most important..." She mumbled to herself.

It was the start of spring, when the days were still short and the temperature only starting to warm up. For Eunice, this was one of the most important time of the year for her research, as she would be able to observe the beautiful moment of the flowers blooming. It was nearly sunset, and she has been preparing to spend the whole night researching out in nature to record all the new flower buds that would be blooming soon.

"Perhaps the southern areas would have more new buds..." She continued to mumble to herself as she walked. She scribbled on the notepad and put it back in her pocket. "Please don't let there be wild animals..." She thought out loud, hoping that she could do her research in peace.

[Headmaster James Argyle]

Headmaster James Argyle was having an Idea.

The whole school felt it, down to their bones. The more mischievous students grinned wider, snickered more. The more serious ones found themselves on their guard - wands, tomes and other magical implements were kept closer to hand, flickering shadows were viewed with greater suspicion, the general direction of any unexpected loud noise was automatically stricken with all manner of magic-dispelling jinx. A few highly-strung individuals checked themselves straight into the infirmary, first thing in the morning.

The professors in the know felt a much more explicable sense of dread steal over their nerves, courtesy of the emergency wards. They had been keyed directly to the Headmaster's mood and were still oversensitive from the aftermath of the last time he'd unleashed his terrifying inspiration of a whole wing of the castle.

Headmaster James Argyle was having an Idea.

A watch was posted around his office, professors put on duty patrolling the corridors nearby. The headmaster himself was granted a personal escort of prefects - the most mentally and magically capable ones available at such short notice, who'd been at least halfway willing to put life and limb on the line to keep the school day progressing as usual.

By the time one of them suspected, aimed her wand at the headmaster's back and cast the advanced illusion unravelling charm, it was far too late. As the esteemed professor erupted into a small mountain of strawberry jelly babies, they could only exchange looks of utter despair and raise the alarm, far too late.

* * * * * * * * * *

The scroll affixed to the back of his travelling robe with ample sticking tape was two feet long, and scrawled all over with tiny runes. It seemed to be working so far. He hoped it was working. He'd stayed up half the night putting the spell together, and so far none of the professors had accosted him yet, though he'd felt the tingle of scrying magic brush dangerously close to his form several times now before the runework on his back diverted it away.

They'd find him before long. Jimmy knew that. The professors knew he knew that, and he knew they knew he knew. And so on. He had a head start, and he was going to make the most of it.

The Pooka watched, magically rendered transparent, as the familiar figure strolled down the path, face in her notes, musing out loud about her plans for the day. Waited until she was a few yards ahead, then began to walk after her.

The air barely rippled as the outline of his body moved over the path. The squeak of his piglet-shaped shoes was a much more obvious mark of his presence, and a warning coming far too late that he'd forgotten to cast a muffling charm on them as well.

After three very loud, very squeaky steps, he froze.

[Eunice]

Eunice literally stopped with one foot off the ground as she heard three squeaky noises from behind her. She almost lost her balance, but she managed to turn her body backwards and place her foot on the ground rather gracefully, like the dancer that she is. There was nobody in particular there, but the sudden stop of the noises made her pretty sure that someone was following her.

Not bothering to talk to whoever was following her, she put her hand forward. "Sun rays of summer, clarify, shimmer!" sparkles appeared around her mouth as she verbalised her spell, and a bright glow appeared in a circular area in front of her, making even the tiniest dust particles in the air visible. Among the random floating particles, she noticed a faint figure, only distinguished from the surrounding by the glimmer along its outline. A dwarf-ish, very recognisable figure.

"Is.. that..." The glow disappeared and Eunice walks closer to the figure she saw earlier, "Headmaster?"

[Headmaster James Argyle]

Too late. The student was already turning around, speaking an incantation - Jimmy lifted a transparent hand to unsuccessfully shield his eyes from the glare.

"Is... that..." He stumbled away from the approaching voice, blinded by the burst of light. "Headmaster?"

Oink, his shoes squeaked once before he overbalanced and fell off the path, landing in the grass to the left with an audible crunch of dead leaves.

"Oh," he said. "Eunice, wasn't it? Fancy meeting you out here. I'd offer you a jelly baby, but I had to use them all just now."

His outline shifted as he picked himself up. "I'm sneaking out, you see," he said, voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper. "Mind if I tag along with you?" he asked, back at normal volume.

[Eunice]

"Oh, God." Eunice pressed her hand on her forehead. "This cannot be happening." She mumbled. Out of all people in the academy, the headmaster is the one whose knowledge she admires most. However, at the same time, she find him extremely irritating. The last thing she'd want is to have the headmaster follow her on her research, especially on one of her most important ones.

"Look, headmaster. I don't really want to sound disrespectful, but," said Eunice, with a tone that has zero amount of respect. "if you want to follow me on one of my most important research trips, you're gonna have to persuade me, somehow." She said, turning around and continuing towards the castle gate.

[Headmaster James Argyle]

He followed the girl in silence, all the way down the path.

Almost silence. He tiptoed, so his piglet shoes squeaked very softly.

Her hand was on the gate before his still-invisible eyes lit up with inspiration. "I know!"

He paused "Finite." There was an unpleasant noise like a whoopee cushion being sat on as his transparency spell evaporated.

"We could pinky-swear. I never break pinky-swears." Jimmy composed his grin into a more appropriately solemn expression and extended a hand to Eunice, all fingers but the smalled curled into a fist. The other hand came up, palm open and facing the student. "I solemnly swear -"

The slight tickle of redirected scrying magic breezed over his back again. It took slightly longer to pass this time. He froze and glanced at the building behind him, then whirled back.

"Isolemnlyswearonmyleftpinkiecanwepleasegonow?"

[Eunice]

"I know!", Eunice heard the headmaster's voice behind her. "Finite." An annoying noise followed the spell, and Eunice turned back to face the now-visible Pooka.

"We could pinky-swear. I never break pinky-swears." Eunice saw the headmaster's expression turning into a more appropriate one, and decided to listen. "I solemnly swear -", she kept her ears open and waited for him to finish. She frowned as he looked back to the building. What is this guy up t-

"Isolemnlyswearonmyleftpinkiecanwepleasegonow?" Jimmy said before she could even finish her thoughts. She pinched the center of her forehead, between her thin eyebrows.

"Fine." Eunice quickly put her left pinky together with his for a brief moment and released it. She turned back and put her hand back onto the gate.

"My hands are full, my hands are tied; Open up, for I'm going outside." The gate slowly opened, the hinges making some noise as it did. Eunice took a few steps out of the castle grounds and stopped. "I'm doing you a favor here, headmaster." She said, turning back and looking towards Jimmy. "So, it's fair enough that I should expect something in return."

[Headmaster James Argyle]

A wave of the Pooka's hand shut the gate behind them. "Since you're on a really important research trip, I could... take the notes for you? If you let me into your head I could write down your thoughts, so you could just keep studying whatever you're researching. You wouldn't have to talk or write. Just think things. I'd do all the recording."

A butterfly flitted by them, red and emerald wings gleaming through the slowly lifting mist. He reached out with his thoughts and coaxed it into his outstretched hand. "Trade you for this butterfly?"

He studied the look on his companion's face for two seconds. "Um... two butterflies?" A sparrow dove from its perch at his summons, swift flight ending neatly on his palm. "Wait, you're not a-"

The sparrow examined the other occupant of its perch for two seconds, then lunged like a viper. The ever-present grin on Jimmy's face stiffened as the population of his hand was reduced to one in a shower of insect scales and a chorus of unpleasant crunching sounds. The sparrow swallowed the last of its meal and launched itself back into the air. Three wingbeats later, its body dropped from the sky and landed in the grass with another unpleasant crunching sound.

"Oh." Crestfallen, he watched the bird convulse. "I think that butterfly was poisonous." He dusted his hands off while the cogs turned furiously in his head.

"I could still take your notes," he said at last. "And I won't doodle on them again. Or write in the margin, or... or color your illustrations, and... I won't tell anybody you helped me sneak out if you don't."

"And... and... and I'll let you tell me about the Art of the Universe later. I'll let you give a lecture on it! And I'll sit in the front row and clap. And I won't giggle this time. I promise. I swear. Swear on my right pinkie."

[Eunice]

Eunice listened and watched as the headmaster let a butterfly onto his palm and invited a bird onto his other palm, and indirectly killed them both. She frowned as the sparrow hit the ground, probably sick or dead.

"I could still take your notes, and I won't doodle on them again. Or write in the margin, or... or color your illustrations, and... I won't tell anybody you helped me sneak out if you don't."

She considered the offer. It would be nice if she didn't have to write her notes, of course, but she didn't like the idea of having the Pooka probe into her thoughts.

"And... and... and I'll let you tell me about the Art of the Universe later. I'll let you give a lecture on it! And I'll sit in the front row and clap. And I won't giggle this time. I promise. I swear. Swear on my right pinkie."

"Wow, wow. I was never interested in lecturing about my research." She paused to glance at the sun, which was already touching the horizon. "And we're gonna need to teleport, or else I'm missing my first research object for the night." She said.

Eunice swiftly took the notepad and a pencil that she kept on her pocket, and handed it to Jimmy. "Don't doodle on the older notes. Keep it tidy, don't hesitate to turn to a new page, most of them are blank anyway." She instructed, looking at the headmaster impatiently.

[Headmaster James Argyle]

Pencil and notepad were accepted, swift as they were offered. Fascination found a home on the Pooka's face as he flipped it open and lost himself for a few seconds in pages upon pages of handwritten details. "I should sneak out more! D'you think we could make this a regular event? Or an irregular one. The professors might catch on. We'll get two paper cups and write runes in the bottom so we can talk through them like telephones, and we could even have codenames for each other so nobody'll know we're planning a trip. Just like the ones the Caledonian Yard give out when they go on secret spy missions."

"You could be..." He glanced at Eunice, carefully studied her expression for all of five seconds. "Tigress." He wrote that in the new page. "I think that's a good codename for you. There's this thing in the way you look at people when you want them to get something done, almost like you'd do something painful if you didn't have the choice to simply walk away, because they're not... um..."

His grin chilled up and died in the blizzard radiating from the student's gaze. "Or let's talk about that later, shall we?"

He dropped the notes down his right sleeve for safekeeping. "So where are we going first?"

[Eunice]

The young mage gazed as James looked inside her notes, and rolled her eyes. He started talking, and she tried her best to ignore him, for his sake.

"You could be..." The small pause made Eunice look back at James, as he seemed to be examining her face. "Tigress."

Her heart skipped a beat. Did he just say "Tigress"? But... She kept her eyes at the Pooka and tried to keep her expression constant.

"There's this thing in the way you look at people when you want them to get something done, almost like you'd do something painful if you didn't have the choice to simply walk away, because they're not... um..." The discontinued explanation lessened her worries. "Or let's talk about that later, shall we?"

"Yeah, that sounds good." Eunice gazed back at the setting sun, trying to erase the rest of her worries. I guess he doesn't really know, she thought to herself.

"So where are we going first?" James' voice brought her attention back to him.

"We're going to a cave north of here." She replied, walking towards James, chanting a rather long spell under her breath. She held the back of his shirt, and sparkles started appearing around both of their bodies. "Ready?"