Xaviers!

The sun's peaking over the horizon as the woman stumbles up the road towards the university's gates. Her normally tightly braided grey hair is askew and first glance might dismiss her as a drunk who has wandered too far in the wrong direction. A closer look past her disheveled appearance would see the blood on her torn shirt front, the blood on her hands, and the metallic glinting shears clutched in her right hand. The shears are also stained with blood, but the blood looks different. She drops to one knee with a grunt of pain and long moment of quiet. Then she struggles to her feet, staggering on towards the gates with determination.

((Open))

Diego had been taking a brisk jog when he saw the bloodstained woman approach the gate and drop.

"Oh crap... hold on!"

He hurried to open the gate and run out to help. Noticing the bloody shears, he slowed for a more cautious approach.

"You... okay miss? Are you hurt?"

"Hurt, yes," she rasps, "Dying actually." She coughs and some blood trickles from the corner of her mouth. She drops to one knee again, coughing again which elicits more sounds of pain. "I am here... to meet..." More coughing cuts off whatever she was about to say.

Mindless of the shears, he rushed to support the woman.

"Shh! Don't talk. We have doctors. We can help. Just hold on," he insisted, fumbling for his cellphone with one hand.

"This thread is done," she says, leaning on him. "There is no stopping its breaking."

"Your... thread? I don't understand," he replied, starting a call to the infirmary.

"Dying a warrior's death in a foreign land, not my preferred way to go, but... it's still a good one," she says before coughing takes her again.

Someone in the infirmary answers, "Medical Center."

"There's an injured woman at the gate. She's... she's hurt pretty bad... please hurry," he said urgently into the phone.

"Don't talk like that... you're not dying if I can help it," he told the woman.

"We'll send someone right away," she responds, "just stay where you are."

The woman smiles at Diego,the shears falling from fingers gone numb, burying themselves into the ground. "Now is not the time for false hope. The Morrigan must know that the dead are moving."

"The... dead?" he asked, deciding at this moment to keep her talking.

Poor lady's delirious...

"The dead... the... draugr... the vampyr..."

"Don't worry. I'll give her the message." At least, he thought he knew who she was looking for.

She sags against Diego. He can see the people coming from the medical center, but he can also see a glow flare around the old woman and then begin to fade rapidly.

"Miss?" he asked, gently shaking her. "No, no, no... Miss! Wake up!" he implored desperately. He checked for a pulse but on some level he already knew... no, felt what the fading glow meant.

As if to confirm his fears, he couldn't seem to find a pulse. The people from the medical center arrived, taking over rapidly, checking the woman's non-existent vitals before starting CPR as they took her towards the medical center.

Diego had never seen someone die before and watched in a daze as the whisked the woman away in a hopeless attempt to resuscitate her. She had been talking one moment and then was gone in a flash. That he actually saw that flash was the last thing on his mind as he began to trudge toward the dorms.

As he walked away, he was suddenly brought up short as if someone had tied a string around his tail. There was no string on his tail though. If he looked back, there was just the woman's blood on the snow and the shears still buried point-first in the ground. Still, for a moment he thought he could see a faint line tangled around his tail, connecting him to that spot and more importantly tied to the shears.

Diego let out a startled yowl as something yanked at his tail. He whirled around and grabbed at the barely visible string, looking quite confused when his hand passed through it.

"The heck?" he said, squinting to follow the line. He had to concentrate to see it, unaware of his eyes softly glowing as he did so.

"The... scissors?" he asked with a blink that made him lose the glow and sight of the string. He walked back to examine them.

They were where she dropped them, sticking out of the snow, but it was easy to see that the points were actually stuck into the ground. They were steaming slightly and the blood on them was beginning to disappear.

Normally he wouldn't even think of touching evidence, but this was just too weird. He crouched and tentatively reached out to touch the shears as if testing a hot stove.

The shears weren't hot, but as his fingers moved closer to them, his fingertips started to tingle like the shears held some sort of electrical charge.

He pulled his hand back. But as curiosity is a leading cause of death in felines, he went right back and picked them up.

The energy jolted up his arm, through his body, and then down his tail. It then reversed the path, running back into the shears. He got a distinctly negative vibe from the shears. Not a doomed vibe, just negative.

A second shocked yowl was cut short by an intense shiver. It felt as if someone had walked over his grave. He let go and stared at them as if they might attack. He pulled his jacket sleeve down over his hand and tried again.

That didn't seem to help matters either. In fact, this time a voice reverberated inside his head and he could feel something picking through his brain. It was a thoroughly unpleasant feeling. WHERE IS THE WEAVER?! WHAT HAVE YOU DONE WITH MY CHILD?

He jumped back and dropped the shears like a... well, like a pair of angry, talking scissors with mind powers.

"Nope! I'm out!" he said before taking out his phone to contact... was it McMahon? McManus!

There certainly is a 'McManus' in the student directory.

She doesn't look like much, but her codename certainly is listed as 'Morrigan.'

And so the jaguar called the raven to talk about the old woman and her magic scissors. Another day at XU.

"...hello?" Sam asks at the unfamiliar number.

"Hey... umm... I don't know how to put this but... there was this old lady at the gate and she... God she was hurt bad... she..." he began, growing more distraught by the word before taking a moment to collect himself.

"She wasn't making sense but she begged me to tell the Morrigan that... I swear this isn't a prank... that the vampires are coming. Then she... died..."

"Wait, what?"

"I... where are you?"

"By the gate. Her... yeah her scissors are tied to me or something and when I pick them up they... yell at me?"

He tried to see the string again, fully expecting to be tangled in it.

"Look, just... just stay right there. I'm on my way."

The string was loosely looped around his tail. Less tied than tangled in his fur.

"Will do," he answered before hanging up. He tried shaking off the phantom string.

The string seems to resist being shaken off, actually tangling more into his fur the more he tries to remove it.

Not one to quit so easily, he shook harder, flicking his tail like a whip.

The string yanked his tail, jerking on it hard in response to the whip, pulling him closer to the shears.

"Ow! C'mon! Whaddya want from me!" he yelled at his inanimate tormentor. "To pick you up again?"

"...okay, I was ready to take the scissors thing in stride, but I didn't expect you to be yelling at them," she says as she approaches.