"Knight? That one of your friends?" Wendy looked at the two, eyebrow raised.

"Yes," Rosa said, before turning to Sugar, perhaps not quite believing that Knight could ever get himself some enemies with how friendly he was, "you sure that's his?"

"I's his roommate, of course I would know." Sugar said with a frown. There could be no way that potion bottle could fall out of the window accidentally. Firstly, the liquid and the bottle fell separately, and second thing, Sugar had the bed next to the window, so there would be no reason for his potion to ever be close to the window. This was sabotage.

"And there is no way that potion could fall out unless someone messed with it. We need to go investigate," Sugar said, looking to Rosa, waiting for her repsonse.

"Since when were you so eager to do anything?" she said, unable to stop herself from making a quick jab at him, "but I agree. We have to see what's going on."

Her furrowed brow made it clear that Rosa was also concerned about this new turn of events. But as the two were about the farewell the second-years, and get their project done later, a voice cut in.

"Hey, let's not be too rash here." Wendy said, as calm and collected as ever. "If your friend is really having their stuff tampered with, the people who did it might still be up there. And who's to know if they're dangerous or not?"

"Yeah, stuff like this doesn't usually happen. There are pranks, but medicine is always off-limits! That's the unspoken rules... but what if it's the same person who took Cynthia?" Jayden said in a hushed, almost afraid tone, "I mean, it probably isn't, but... y'know."

Even though he tried to shrug off the suggestion, as soon as he heard the words, Sugar was certain: this definitely had something to do with that girl's disappearance and that werewolf prowling around the school.

"The werewolf..." Rosa muttered, seemingly having the same thought.

"The what now?" Jayden said, sounding very confused, "I thought they lived in the... what do you call them? Reserves? Wendy, what's going on?"

"A werewolf, huh?" Wendy mused, ignoring her friend's voice, leaving Jayden to stew in his questions for a little longer, "Where'd you hear that?"

Sugar wasn't quite sure how to reply to that question. He was sure Miss Nightblood would not appreciate it being spread around, especially since it might be misinformation, but Rosa chomped at the bit to talk with Wendy.

"A werewolf might be the one responsible for kidnapping the girl! The Peace Sorcerers found scratch marks on the trees around where she disappeared from, as well as drops of blood. And there's this rumour going around about this werewolf in our year, but who knows if that's true."

"Mmh, foul play definitely took place then. I thought as such. I heard some third-years talking, and Cynthia had no reason to run away, as far as they could tell. To think a magical creature is involved though, and that it might be coming after other students, this is definitely gonna to fuel a hell of a fire among everybody." she said with a sigh, "And to think that you'd still want to go investigate after learning all that." Wendy sighed. "I certainly admire your bravery, but..."

"You're gonna need backup. There's no way you guys can go up alone. You don't nearly have enough magical prowess for this kind of stuff." Wendy said with a determined look in her eyes.

Rina nodded.

"If Wendy is the one saying you should exercise caution, then it's really—"

"And we'd be glad to help." Wendy quickly added with a grin.

At her words, Jayden opened his mouth, about to protest, but soon gave up, perhaps sensing that getting his friend to change her mind would be near impossible. However, Rina was much more willing to speak their mind.

"I knew it was too good to be true... you've never been one to stay away from any kind of excitement for too long. But whatever you do, I'm not going." they said, the raven on their shoulder letting out a squawk of agreement, "And don't say 'we'.Like you said, there's danger, I'm not willing to go walking off into the jaws of a werewolf to investigate something, and I don't think Jayden would want to either. Besides, you've barely met them!" they said, gesturing to Sugar and Rosa.

And Sugar knew they were probably right. There was no reason to get anyone involved into this whole situation, even if Rosa had a very obvious desire to get closer to them. Besides, the more he thought about it, the more suspicious he became. Charlie and friends had certainly not made their hatred for Rosa hidden, and after Knight stood up for her against them, that made him a target for their vitriol as well...

Wendy just laughed.

"Come on, don't try and say you're not a little curious about what they have to say. What if there really is a werewolf out there, wouldn't you want to see it?"

"Don't tempt me..." Rina grumbled in reply, but it was clear that yes, their curiosity had indeed been piqued. But it still appeared that their fear of danger was holding out... for now.

As Sugar thought about the idea of Charlie, the more convinced he became that it was true: Charlie had to have something to do with this. It wouldn't be impossible for him to do it. The dorms didn't have any locks on the doors, so it certainly could be possible to break in. If anyone could find a foolproof, simple unlocking spell, it would be Asteria Bones.

"But hey, it might be best for you to stay behind." Wendy conceded. "Your magic has never been particularly strong for combat and that kind of stuff. And besides, it's your turn to clean the hideout."

"I'd almost forgotten about that... gee, thanks a lot for reminding me, Wendy." they said, throwing a death glare in their friend's direction.

"Don't you all think you're just blowing all this out of proportion?" Sugar finally spoke up, "First of all, the whole werewolf thing is just a rumour. No one actually knows if it's true. I thought you would better than to get everyone riled up over nothing, Rosa."

"And second of all, I have a theory."

✧༺✦✮✦༻∞　　∞༺✦✮✦༻✧

As much as Sugar tried to protest, Wendy and Jayden did end up coming along. It wasn't even a fair fight as he was outvoted three to one (Rina abstained, too busy trying to find a good enough spell to clean up the potion spill on the roof), but at least Rosa was satisfied.

"You guys have a nice dorm." Wendy mused as she flung open the trapdoor leading to the first-years' common area.

"I'd always heard about how nice the Starseeker's dorm was, but I ended up being put into Ivyrangers. It's the third-year dorm now. Lots of plants, but way too dark, having a place with such big windows is so much better."

"I know right, it's so cool." Rosa said with a grin.

Sugar fought the urge to gag and instead turned towards the other older student, who was slowly heaving himself up

"How do you guys survive this every day? So many stairs... maybe I just need to work out more..." he said, before promptly bursting into a coughing fit.

"You and me both," Sugar said with a sigh of solidarity. Thank goodness this Jayden was here. He seemed pretty rational, and Sugar needed some of that, or he was actually going to lose it with Rosa's antics.

The group hadn't been quite as convinced as he was that Charlie and co. had anything to do with this situation, but Sugar had insisted. They might not fully know what Charlie was capable of, but Sugar did, and the boy definitely had the vitriol to do something like this.

"Anyways," he said, pushing past the two girls, "let's get to the room. I don't particularly want anyone to know that we're bringing two second-years up here."

"Why? Is there some kind of inter-year group animosity going on that we don't know about?" Wendy asked

"More that it's against the rules?"

"Oh yeah, almost forgot about that."

Before Sugar could even question how someone could 'forget' the rules, Wendy quickly added:

"So, mind leading us to the room?"

Sugar silently nodded, and hurried down the hallway, before stopping in front of his door. This was it, the moment of truth. To see if his theory of sabotage was actually correct. He opened the door.

The room looked pretty normal at first glance, everything remaining where the two boys had left them that morning, but on closer inspection, there was something very different: the window was wide open. If the people who messed with Knight wanted to cover up their tracks, they were doing a bad job of it.

"Definitely amateurs," Wendy said, a smirk present in her voice, "any good prankster knows that covering up any evidence of your meddling is a crucial step."

"You're calling this whole thing a prank?" Sugar said in a borderline hiss.

"Look, I'm not calling it anything," Wendy said with a laugh, shrugging Sugar's jab off, "let's just start our investigation, shall we?"

Sugar let out a few discontented grumbles, but found no reason to argue with the redhead for much longer.

"Okay, so where do you think we should start looking for traces of them?"

"No need for that." Wendy said with a grin.

"What do you mean?"

"We're witches, aren't we?" she whipped out her wand, an arm-length one made out of metal, with a painted purple handle and a hollow glass sphere attached at the end, "We'll just use magic to find out."

She swept her wand across the room.

"Revellium Sapiens." she muttered in a low tone as a few miniature lightning bolts struck the insides of the orb on her wand, and sure enough, a strange hazy glow filled the room, before it slowly began to gather in certain parts of the room.

"That's a trick I learnt from a friend of mine, it's used by the Peace Sorcerers a lot as it locates any item that contains human DNA. So if our dear foes have left anything behind, it would surely find it.

The glow seemed most prominent on Sugar's side of the room, leaving Knight's side strangely barren, but that didn't matter, as Sugar's attention was drawn to a glow on the window hinge.

He rushed forward to see what it was. And there, stuck in one of the window hinges, was a singular golden blond hair. And there was only one kid in the grade who had hair of this colour.

"That uptight Crowstrike bastard."

┌─── ･ ｡ﾟ★: *.☪ .* :☆ﾟ. ───┐

𝔸𝕦𝕥𝕙𝕠𝕣'𝕤 𝕟𝕠𝕥𝕖

└─── ･ ｡ﾟ★: *.☪ .* :☆ﾟ. ───┘

Rosa thinks she's real slick with her crush but we all know better, don't we? xD

Also i hope Wendy gives the vibe of the chill unbothered person, because that's what im going for heh.

also

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Tada!

Yes I know i should be tackling the mcs before i draw the side characters, but c'mon, aren't they the best? (Rina is never beating the self-insert accusations...)

~Viva