Juno rubbed his eyes as he headed to Dr. Belmont's room. He'd managed to get in some studying earlier and would probably get a decent score, but that was only if he didn't fall asleep halfway through.
As he neared the door of Belmont's room, he saw another figure standing outside, and sighed to himself. Spiderman was there, just his luck.
"Is it not open?" He asked. These were the specified office hours, weren't they? He checked his watch. He wasn't late. So where was the professor?
The sound of footsteps had snagged Lancer's attention, and he wasn't all that happy to see Freckleface McGee approaching the classroom. Figures.
"If it had been, I wouldn't be standing here," he grumbled in response, still a tad irritated by their earlier exchange. He shook the doorknob as a demonstration of his point. "It's locked, and I don't see Dr. Belmont in the room. But the light's on, so somebody's gotta be in there, right?"
Something about all of this felt off. Dr. Belmont was hardly the kind of guy to miss office hours, especially if he had students that needed to make up work. It didn't sit well with Lancer, the more he dwelled on it — or maybe he was just being paranoid.
(Freckleface McGee fjebenxndk this is great)
"Yeah, okay, right," Juno looked around the hall to see if there was anyone who might have a key, but it was empty. Clearly not the busiest office hours the school had seen.
He tried to turn the doorknob again and sighed, pulling a paper clip out of his pocket and fiddling with it before inserting it into a lock. "Do not tell anyone about this," Juno told Spiderman as the lock clicked. "If anyone asks, the door just wasn't locked properly."
The door swung open when Juno turned the knob. He stuck his head in cautiously. "Professor? Er, Dr. Belmont? Anyone here?" There was no response, so he headed towards the front of the room, where Belmont's desk was.
(hehe B) )
A surprised whistle escaped Lancer as he observed the current breaking and entering that was taking place. He wasn't all that surprised somebody like this guy would know how to lockpick, it just amazed him that he had the guts to do it in a school, and by extension to Dr. Belmont.
"I don't think I'll have to if the cameras are seeing this," he replied with a glance down the hall, but it seemed to dawn on him that he was now an accomplice and if this kid was going to get in trouble, so was he.
"Nah, I've got us an alibi," he decided, suddenly a little more agreeable given his recent revelation.
He watched the other kid enter the classroom and call for the professor, to no avail. The arachnoid poked his head in afterwards, taking the same moment of cautious observation, before following Glasses Guy into the classroom.
"He really is just.. not here. That's weird."
Lancer followed Juno to the desk, a small pile of papers catching his eye. He shuffled through them and realized they were the make up tests, each with the student's name written up top in Dr. Belmont's handwriting. He was able to recover his test, the other one belonging to a "Juno Silver". He frowned, then turned to the human.
"You're here for the test, I'm assuming? Is your name Juno? 'Cause he's got our tests here, and…"
His voice trailed off as he extended the test towards the other fellow, his gaze focused on the bookshelf. It had been there for as long as anyone could remember, and it always housed Dr. Belmont's prized collection of books from older times. Nobody was allowed to touch it except him.
What had caught Lancer's attention, however, was on the floor right in front of the bookshelf. He knelt and drew a finger across the substance, its waxy texture discomforting him only a little. Hence how it felt, Lancer realized it was wax belonging to a candle. His brow furrowed; candles were outdated technology, only really used in spiritual activities or to make the house smell nicer. He sniffed the substance and, suddenly, gagged, recoiling from it with wide eyes. It had a horribly metallic smell to it, almost like that of blood.
And that wax lead right to the bookshelf.
Juno picked up his test from on top of the pile. "Yeah, that's mine." He poked around some more. It seemed like a normal desk to him. "Maybe he forgot…" Juno trailed off. He really needed to get this test done, maybe he'd have to contact Belmont again. That'd be a pain.
He saw Four-Eyes gag near the bookshelves and snorted. "Yeah, the smell of books makes me sick too. All that knowledge, disgusting." Spider kid seemed worried though, so he moved closer. "You good?"
(Sorry my responses aren't as long as yours lol I'm out with my mom rn)
Lancer coughed, shaking his head, trying to steady his breathing. When he regained his voice, it was strained with confusion and worry.
"On.. on the floor," he managed, pointing at the trail of wax. "Something's on the floor and it smells like blood. I-I don't know if it's human blood or elf blood or what have you, but I.."
He folded his many arms across his chest in an attempt to comfort himself, staring at the wax. "Blood and wax, and it reeks, like it's fresh. I don't know what something like that would be doing in a classroom. It leads to the bookshelf, too."
(no problem!! im doin schoolwork atm so my responses are varying too lol)
Juno wrinkled his nose. "Ok, gross. What the fuck is a history professor doing with blood in his room?" He followed the trail to the bookshelf and started poking around.
"Are bleeding books a thing? Maybe it's a weird fad amongst old people. I've heard of, like, screaming books. Maybe it's like that." He started poking around the bookshelf, pulling out books and reading spines. "Seems like a pretty normal collection to me." The blood clearly wasn't coming out of any of the books.
The smell of blood was starting to bother him, and Juno coughed a bit. "This is seriously disgusting, should we call someone in here?"
Lancer was about to say yes, but hesitated, glancing back at the door. They'd probably be busted for breaking into a locked classroom, and Lancer didn't know if they'd be taken seriously if they explained the situation.
And, he just didn't feel like talking to any more people than he had to.
"It's probably fine," he suggested with a dismissive wave of a hand. "Maybe… uhm, well, there's no explanation for this off the top of my head, but maybe the professor has a perfectly valid reason for blood wax to be in his classroom."
Ignoring the fact that there's pretty much no perfectly valid reason to have blood-infused wax in a classroom, of course.
Lancer grimaced, then pulled out his phone, scrolling through his camera roll until he found the day's lecture. He rolled through the recording until, with a breath of relief, he realized he'd caught the professor adjusting a book on the shelf. He attempted to zoom in, but he couldn't pin point exactly which book Dr. Belmont had adjusted.
"Okay, I'm going to sound bat-shit crazy, but here me out," Lancer began, rewinding the video just a tad before handing his phone to Juno. "I record the lectures sometimes, and this happened earlier today. Do you think, with the blood wax, that what he does here means anything..?"
"Valid reason for blood wax?" It was one of the most ridiculous things Juno had ever heard, but he brushed it off. It was a strange situation; it was bound to bring on strange phrases.
Spiderman handed him a phone, showing him a video clip. The professor adjusted a book hastily, looking worried. Juno looked back up at the spider kid. "You're right, you do sound bat-shit crazy. You think there's, what, a legit secret door in here? That's-" he shook his head but handed back the phone and walked along the bookshelves. "Right, you look at your phone and tell me when I'm standing where Belmont is in the video. Any mysterious shit is worth a glance, I guess."
Lancer nodded and took a few steps back, gauging Juno's position with Dr. Belmont's in the video and throwing out directional phrases until Juno was situated properly.
"Yeah! Yeah, that's it," he announced when Juno had found himself standing a tad to the left. "Try searching the shelf right before the top shelf, it looks to be around that area."
He was really hoping something would come out of this; if nothing happened and he really was losing a few marbles, he didn't think he'd hear the end of it.
(Sorry for not responding quicker! I'm on a car ride and it always makes me spacey lol)
"Yeah, alright," Juno stopped, looking around the shelves. "This feels really fucking stupid," he muttered as he started testing books, pulling them out and pushing them back into place.
It seemed as though this whole idea was entirely pointless, he wasn't getting any results from this. "You're sure this is where he was standing?" He called to the spider boy, whose name he probably should have known by now.
A sudden click brought Juno out of his thoughts. The book he had been pulling on wasn't coming out all the way. He stopped and yanked harshly on the book, and with a whirring noise, the bookcase opened. Juno froze. Spidey was right. "Well, shit."
(no problem!! big mood lol)
Lancer ran a hand through his hair, rubbing the base of one of his horns as he stared at the opened doorway in awe.
"So… this entire time, he's just… had a secret doorway? In the school? In plain view of the students? For.. how long?"
He sat in the professor's chair, holding his head in two of his hands.
"This could be anything from a secret library of ancient knowledge to a hideaway for a secret criminal organization. We've probably just busted a major drug ring or something, and now we're gonna have to be in on it too or they'll kill us."
He stood up, his expressions and gestures becoming more frantic the more he lost himself in his hypotheticals. "O-Or what if he's plotting to overthrow the government, or start another war?" He turned to Juno. "We have a criminal mastermind or a cult leader or an evil overlord for a professor and he's been hiding underneath the school this whole time! We're going to die — if Dr. Belmont doesn't kill us, the Headmaster will!"
(Xjdbxnj aa sorry again school's wild today)
Juno grinned ever wider as the lad listed possible catastrophes. "So we're gonna overthrow a criminal. Oh, this is so cool. This is the best day of my life. The danger, it calls to me," he stated dramatically, staring through the doorway.
He looked back at Spiderman. "Let's see what's in here," he suggested, already stepping through the doorway.
(awdoa you're good!! i just got out of school myself awoad)
"What? Are you the bat-shit crazy person?!" Lancer exclaimed, catching up to Juno but refusing to go any further past the doorway. He peered through it and into the dark, ominously lit hallway, trembling so badly he thought for a minute his knees would buckle beneath him.
"J-Juno – that's your name, right? – listen, I don't like you, at all, but I really don't think you should go in there, I —"
He'd taken a step past the doorway without realizing it, a hand extended towards Juno, but paused. The second his foot had made contact with the ground, he could feel it, and it manifested as a shiver that shook his whole body. He didn't know what it was, but he hated it.
He grit his teeth.
"Don't go alone, at least," he whispered. "Whatever is in here… it doesn't like you, doesn't like us being here."
Juno rolled his eyes. "It's just a hallway. Hallways don't have feelings." He didn't understand why this guy was freaking out so much. Obviously, Juno himself was excited; it wasn't every day that one found a secret door leading to an ominous looking hallway. But it wasn't scary. As far as Juno was concerned, this was the coolest day of his life. Except for the spider kid, who was really putting a damper on things.
"Look, if you wanna come with me then I'm not gonna stop you. You look like you're about to wet yourself though so if you'd rather stay behind it might be better for your sanity," he joked, shifting his weight between feet. "Just like, make your decision, cause I'm gonna head in."
Lancer, after a minute of indecisiveness, decided that he didn't want to stand outside and worry about Juno the whole time. He put his other foot in and winced, expecting something to happen, expecting to feel something different – something worse.
"I-I guess… it's fine..?" he suggested cautiously after nothing occurred.
The bookshelf then, suddenly, slammed shut behind the two, causing him to start with a yelp, stumbling back as he turned to face the now barred entrance. He then moved towards it quickly, feeling around the edges in a desperate attempt to pry the bookshelf away, but to no avail.
He turned back to face Juno, covering his face with two of his hands while the other two fidgeted with each other.
"We're gonna die, we're gonna die, we're going to die…"
"Yeah, obviously it's fine, what were you expecting from a-" Juno's snapping was cut off by the door slamming shut behind them. The arachnid immediately started panicking, and it took a serious amount of effort not to laugh at the poor guy.
"We'll just have to find another way out, then," Juno attempted to reassure the kid. "Or we can follow the professor back out or something." The spider wasn't calming down.
"Look, Spiderman, er- spider kid, Arachne, insect man, Four-Eyes," Juno's brain stubbornly refused to give him the actual name of his six-limbed companion. He wasn't actually sure he'd ever gotten a name for the guy. "Pretend I know your name. Look, you, there may be a lot of creepy shit going on but we're gonna be alright. I know what I'm doing. Kinda."
The series of odd nicknames Juno listed to get Lancer's attention was enough to pull him from his panicked state, and it seemed to occur to him that he'd never actually given Juno his name. Though his thoughts were still racing and his hands still shook, he managed to pull himself together enough to stop raving. He wrapped two of his arms around himself in a self-comforting hug, the other two continuing to fidget.
"Lancer," he replied. "My name is Lancer."
He turned around and felt the back of the bookcase in some odd last hope it would move, but when it again refused to do anything, he gave a defeated sigh and turned back around.
"Okay, okay. Okay. Everything's fine," he whispered, throwing his hands up in surrender to whatever weird vibe took hold of the area. "I guess the only direction we can move now is forward. I-I don't feel any booby traps or hidden compartments, so I… I guess it's safe. For now, at least. I'll follow you."
Lancer! Spiderman had a name. Thank god. Juno had been running out of nicknames. "That's the spirit. Panicking won't help anyone." Lancer kept talking; in his rambling he mentioned not 'feeling' booby traps, which only served to increase Juno's confusion immensely.
"Can you feel traps? Like a 6th sense? That is… so cool. That's legitimately amazing. That's- ok," Juno stopped himself from getting too far off track, and conjured a small ball of light in his hand to help brighten up the hallway. "I'll go ahead, you use your dope spider senses to tell me if I'm about to get beheaded."
"I-It's not that cool, honestly," Lancer admitted quickly, dragging a hand along the wall to get a feel for the area as he followed Juno down the hallway. "It's more like vibrations that let me feel both the surface and the interior of whatever I'm touching. Sounds great until you realize you can't really turn it off."
Noting the little ball of light Juno had created, however, Lancer was prompted to ask:
"So… you do magic? Is it a genetic thing, or did you learn it?"
Juno tilted his head, thinking. "Sort of both, I guess? My whole family is full of witches so I've always like, been around magic. Which helped. But I had to learn specific spells and such so. So yeah, both." He looked around the hallway. It seemed to be getting creepier every second. Made sense for a secret passageway, he supposed.
"What about your whole sixth sense deal? I mean that seems like a spider thing, but have you like, just always been able to sense things, or?"
A family of witches, huh? Not that odd; magic had existed since the Old Age and has only evolved along with society. But witches were always strongly attuned to magic, he'd learned, and exercised caution around them. He'd have to be careful with Juno.
Juno's question, however, surprised him, and his voice cracked a bit as he responded.
"Yeah, it's– it's a thing, being derived from spiders and all. If I touch too many different things at once, though, I get super bad sensory overload, so I try to just… not touch stuff, or people. Especially people."
He shuddered. Something felt off about the floor ahead. He closed his eyes, focusing entirely on the information his feet were providing him.
"Staircase, up ahead. Stairs aren't in good condition, though, so be careful where you step."
Juno nodded as Lancer explained. He was prone to sensory overload as well, and he could imagine it'd be worse with an extra sense going off all the time. Now that he thought about it, the ability probably wasn't as fun as he had originally thought. Still, it was useful for him.
Especially in this scenario. There were, in fact, rickety stairs up ahead of them. "Why wouldn't they just fix their stairs? Like this is definitely a safety violation of some sort. I get it as like a trap or whatever, but-" Juno caught his foot in a section of broken wood, and had to yank it back out, nearly toppling off of the staircase. "Shit. See, like don't they have to use the stairs too? Who booby traps themself?"
Lancer snickered. "I guess calling anybody to come and repair the stairs would give away the secret."
He paused at the top of the stairs, peering downwards. The rotting wooden stairs spiraled, leading into an empty black void too far down for him to see what lied at the bottom.
The odd air he'd felt ever so slightly at the beginning had grown stronger.
He knelt, laying two hands on the stairs for a more precise feeling. One thing he did consider a perk was that the more hands he had on one object, the better he could read through it.
"Wood, rotting, but dry. Most of the weak stairs are near the top and the bottom of the staircase, but it does seem like a few in the middle could probably snap. Other than that, I don't—"
He sighed. "No, nevermind, there's a tripwire at the bottom, but I don't know what it's tied to. Maybe the design of the stairs is intentional."
He stood, brushing the dust off of his jeans. "Hey, weird question, since you can do magic, can you, like… detect other people's magic? Do you know what magic feels like?"
Juno squinted down the staircase and started testing every step gingerly before he placed his foot on it. Clearly, someone didn't want them in here. Fortunately, that had never stopped Juno before, and it wouldn't stop him now. He still tripped several times on his way down; the stairs were fucking ridiculous and he had never been dexterous.
It took a bit of thought to figure out how to answer Lancer's question. "I guess… kinda? I mean, it feels different when I'm around magic or whatever. Like a hum. Or something. It's not like a sense, though, I couldn't track someone using their magic. I can just like, tell when some magical shit's near me," he explained. It wasn't a good explanation, but it was a weird concept and he wasn't feeling particularly eloquent.
There was in fact a trip wire at the bottom of the staircase. The last step was so rickety that he almost face planted on it. "Be careful at the bottom," he relayed to Lancer. "It gets increasingly unstable."