Tracey Davis (trasser) wrote in saveatlantisic, @ 2019-04-20 22:32:00 |
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Entry tags: | !log, *hannah, *tiny, henry mills, tracey davis |
Log: Tracey Davis & Henry Mills
Tracey Davis & Henry Mills
Mid-March
St. Vladimir's (mission)
Tracey is compelled; Henry finds her
Low | Complete |
At first it felt very strange being back at a boarding school that wasn’t Hogwarts. Some days she missed her school years but most of the time she was glad to be done with that stage of her life. Hogwarts had been tainted for her with how those years ended with the battle. Still, though, she found that talking with the students at St. Vladimir’s proved to be easier than she thought it might even if she didn’t exactly fit the normal instructor type. She looked more the dhampir type than Moroi, so she spent most of her time talking with the novices. There had been a few strange things going on since they arrived. The students (and as a result, Tracey and the rest of the team posing as students) were in uniform even though Rose had mentioned that wasn’t normal for the school. Everyone seemed to be on autopilot or like someone had turned the entire school into St. Stepford. There were a couple of times when talking to students that the weird compulsion was starting to fade, but after a few seconds they went right back to acting strangely. At different points during the mission so far, the team had investigation different areas of the campus and grounds, but so far they hadn’t uncovered much yet. Needing to get some air, Tracey decided to head towards one of the back areas of the grounds towards the woods. She’d told Rose and the others that she’d check back in soon and would radio in if she found anything. Up ahead there was a cabin, and she was almost certain there was a light on inside. Not wanting to be seen right away, Tracey kept herself in the shadows, and inched closer. As she did, a strange feeling began to come over her. She was having trouble concentrating, and her body began feeling very relaxed. She managed to shake it off for a moment and long enough to see someone exit the cabin. Ducking out of sight, Tracey crept over to a brush large enough to hide her but close enough to the cabin to see inside. What she saw inside made made her gasp. Three students that looked like Moroi were bound and tied to chairs. On the table were several silver stakes. It was barely seconds later that Tracey stood and started walking back towards the school. Not in the shadows or trying to hide, but slowly walking back. There was a vacant expression on her face the and, a haziness clouded her mind and started to take over. Nearing the school, she passed by a few other students and then by Henry but recognition of him didn’t process and she simply kept on walking. Henry was pretty taken back by everything around him - the way he’d grown up had basically been peak small-town kid life. His classes were small, he could have walked safely to school every day if he wanted to, everyone knew everyone. Of course, that tended to happen at boarding schools too - but the settings were pretty different. Of course, he’d read books like Harry Potter as a kid and he happened to have a pretty vivid imagination so there was no denying that he had imagined places like this time and time again. Places where kids got into adventures and hyjinx and got to learn magic and all that. His own dealings with magic had been a little less fantasy novel and a little more </i>fairy tale</i>. But it did leave him, coupled with his friendships he’d made in Atlantis, with a good idea of what to expect. Based off of what Rose had told all of them, the many conversations he’d had with Jill, he hadn’t been necessarily ready for what they’d stumbled upon. The sheer amount of compulsion around them was definitely something that pulled you out of any of the more fantastical elements about the fact that you were dealing with vampires and the supernatural. It had made sense to send him and Tracey in to mingle with the kids - she was used to this sort of setting and Henry was still pretty young, plus he had a little knowledge of the place. At least enough to pass off to talk to people. Things sure as heck were weird, way more formal than any of the stories he’d heard and he could only imagine how weird it had to be for Rose being back here; his train of thought was cut off suddenly as he saw Tracey walk by, actually, almost directly into him and an immediate feeling of dread settled into his shoulders. “That’s not right.” He muttered, walking off after Tracey. Following her for a moment, it wasn’t hard (though it was a little distressing) to realize she had probably fallen under whatever compulsion was going on and Henry bit the bullet and reached out, grabbing Tracey’s wrist to try and stop her. “Tracey?” He questioned, sort of hoping he was wrong - but realistically knowing probably not. Tracey was basically on autopilot now with the compulsion she was feeling. There was still a faint hint of self awareness that she couldn't manage to grab hold to no matter how hard she tried in the back part of her mind. Instead, the sound of Henry's voice made her pause, and she easily turned around when he took her by the arm. "Yes?" She replied. There was a polite smile to go along with the vacant look in her eyes. She looked at him for a moment then started to leave again. Some unseen force was pulling her towards the school. To where exactly, she wasn't sure, but she still needed to be there. Leaving poor Henry behind, she began walking towards the cafeteria. Once she started passing other students, it didn't even occur to her to speak or make eye contact with any of them as she had been all along prior to the compulsion. Well, at least she’d stopped. Henry repeated that to himself a few times as he ran over the options in his mind. Tracey was definitely compelled and he knew there wasn’t really anything he could do about it. His hesitation, unfortunately, opened up a window for her to start to wander off again and Henry knew that he really only had one option here - try and get Tracey to Rose. He wasn’t equipped to deal with this and while Rose wasn’t a Moroi and didn’t actually have any compulsion abilities herself, at least Rose might know what to do about it beyond some basic this is definitely bad level. He started after her again, but didn’t try and stop her this time; now he was just trying to stay in line with her. “So, some of us are meeting up.” Henry said - attempt number one was going to be just simply trying to see if he could get her to walk in the direction where he knew Rose and the others were. That, of course, was the least distressing way he could think to do this and he figured if he kept it vague then it might not red flag whatever compulsion she was under. The less details on who, why, and where he was suggesting she go seemed like a good idea. Even if she'd known where she was going exactly instead of being on autopilot, Tracey wouldn't have known why she was going there. Henry's voice pulled her back again, and she smiled politely. "Oh. That's nice," she replied and kept on walking. Only this time she seemed to have turned into another direction almost as if she was subconsciously going where Henry was going. That small part of her still aware of what was happening in the far corners of her mind was the likely reason. "What is the meeting about?" She asked. There was a mild curiosity that probably shouldn't have been there, a hint that maybe she wasn't as compelled as the rest of the faculty, staff, and student population at the school. "I wouldn't want to miss anything important." Well, okay, that had worked for a moment - now Henry just had to stall long enough to get her to the group. Get her to Rose. That was his goal right now - get Tracey to Rose. He had to get Tracey to Rose. Even if they couldn’t fix it yet, they could contain her there. Most importantly, he just had to get her there. Now, Henry wasn’t the best of liars - it wasn’t that he was awful or unbelievable, it was just that it wasn’t something he’d trained himself in or cared about. He liked being honest, he preferred the ‘sneak out and apologize later for it’ model than the actual lying approach to things. It was just how he was. This was no different and it definitely meant he was trying to scramble - standing there as Tracey started to follow along. He had to drag things out, the more he dragged things out the more likely he was to get her close enough to at least shove or drag over to Rose and apologize later for it. Definitely apologize later, of course. That was just who Henry was. His only idea was, well, risky, “About the new instructors.” He answered, “The students were going to discuss our revised lesson plans.” That sounded viable, at least viable enough with a few people trying to wiggle their way into answers that way. He just had to hope she bought it or at least asked questions he could continue to ask vaguely as they inched closer to where the rest of the team was hanging out. If Tracey had been coherent even a little bit, she would have told Henry to take her by the shoulders and point her in the exact direction she needed to go. Even drag her by the hand because acting like a Stepford Wife sucked. It reminded her a little too much of the Imperius curse, and suddenly the comparisons to Hogwarts weren't as comforting as they had been initially. For her first mission, she was going to really hope that this never, ever happened again. But Tracey wasn't coherent, and she gave Henry a blank smile while she listened but then frowned slightly. Lesson plans? No, that wasn't good. Not good at all. Making a change like this without prior notice was hard to comprehend in the state she was in, and a large part of her felt like she needed to make sure all was well. "Alright, thank you for this information," was all she said though as she kept walking towards the school buildings. Her classroom was along the east side of the school buildings which happened to be where all of them were set up while on the mission. The blank smile was just creepy, okay basically everything about this was creepy but the way Tracey was looking at him just really pushed Henry over any personal boundaries he may have had when it came to holding himself back. This was looking more and more like it was going to take an amount of force he wasn’t comfortable with - but for Tracey’s sake, he was just going to have to go with it. Apparently his gentle approach of just trying to sort of coax her wasn’t going to work. It almost made Henry’s - no it did make Henry’s skin crawl. It gave him goosebumps but this was bad, really bad and he couldn’t ignore that - he couldn’t just leave Tracey here to the whims of whatever this was and who knew where she could wander off to if he just went and got Rose to try and fix it? Henry muttered under his breath before he went after her - making sure to put himself between her and the direction she seemed keen on walking in. This made him uncomfortable at every level - he didn’t like it, but he had to do it. He had to. “Come on, you can’t pass this up.” He said - keeping up the ruse just to keep it up. He figured, even if he was going to try and move her a little more physically that if he dropped the act entirely that would maybe make things even worse. So with that Henry put a hand on Tracey’s bicep and tried to nudge her in the direction the rest of the team was - giving a little nod. “Aren’t you at least a little curious?” He said, pushing her gently in that direction. In the far backs of her mind, Tracey was practically screaming for him to just hex her and drag her unconscious body back to Rose and the rest of their team. Lock her up and keep her from acting like a bloody idiot. The compulsion was pushing back hard, but there was a small, brief moment where she was able to nod and smile in agreement with Henry. Instead of what she wanted to say, she instead managed to get out, “Yes, of course. I’d like to see it.” Then the moment of clarity, even in the back of her mind, was clouded over again. She’d already agreed to go along with him, so thankfully the compulsion didn’t manage to override that. Yet, anyway. There was no telling what would happen if they didn’t get inside somewhere quickly. “I will follow your lead,” she said with a blank smile and waited for him to lead the way. |