Xaviers!

Meanwhile, in the dorms...

The spectacle outside draws plenty of attention, half of the dorm rooms having a pretty good view of it out onto the driveway and it's loud enough that the noise of something clanging around inside the airducts is easy to miss. Until one of the grates in the hallway is pushed out from the inside and falls to the carpeted floor. The grate is soon followed by a robotic-seeming hand and lower arm, a thick steel wire spooling out from the elbow and pulling a series of sleek, armored pieces out of the airduct. An upper arm, a chunk of shoulder followed by three more substantial pieces that look like they come together to form a torso. Another arm, two legs and finally a blank oval shape rolls out of the duct and lands on top of the pile. A soft whirring noise kicks up as the cables begin to retract, pulling the whole assembly together into a humanoid shape, the torso pieces fitting together along sides that look to be made from translucent material as opposed to the sleek white and steel design of the outside shell. Inside a pulsing, almost organic movement can be seen before everything snaps together seamlessly into the humanoid shape of a blank mannequin, arms dangling loosely and the head lolling about for a moment before the cable pulls it taut against the torso, snapping it upright.

From around the corner, a green-haired be-ponytailed girl peaked at the source of the noise.

“Will...what the hell is that thing?” a very human Stephanie whispered from behind Will.

Sean poked his head out of his room as well and stared at the well... the thing that looked like some kind of robot?

"Did somebody's robotics project escape their room?" Sean asked

The... puppet(?) swivels it's head back and forth between the three students. It's head only has vague pits where eyes should be an a smooth bump hinting at a nose. Then it sets it's lack-of-eyes on one the door to room 131 and moves towards it, passing by Sean in the process. Something about the way it moves feels off, jerky and smooth at the same time, as if it is prepared to collapse into a pile again at any moment.

"Who's in room 131?" Will whispered back.

Sean steps out of his room and begins following the automaton/puppet/robot/thing as it walks towards room 131 more out of curiosity than anything else.

"Whoever built you didn't build you to last," Sean mused quietly as he observed the things movement.

It turns around as Sean speaks up and it's torso seems to bounce a bit. It takes a moment to realize that it's... chuckling. Then it shakes it's head and lifts one finger, twirling it in a sideways eight motion.

At the same time the door to 131 creaks open, revealing a startled face framed by brown hair. Seeing the unsettling blank puppet in the hallway Archaea takes a couple steps back into her room.

“I...might be assuming some things, but I don’t think this thing is our friend,” Stephanie murmured as her eyes flashed yellow and she pitched forward with a snarl, willing herself to shift more quickly than she typically did, which hurt twice as much.

“Who are you. What do you want?” The werewolf growled, advancing on the puppet slowly.

As if to answer Stephanie it lifts one arm which shoots off at the elbow, into the open room, grabbing Archaea who let's out a startled scream as she's reeled out of her room by the collar of her hoodie. It whirls around, holding up a struggling Archaea like a shield. Or a weapon.

"Oh god, get back! Don't touch me!" Archaea shouts. Oddly enough at Sean and Stephanie, it seems.

"Well this is escalating quickly," Sean said before beginning to gather energy for a spell. "Would you kindly put our fellow student down?"

Stephanie quirked a brow at Sean and will at the reaction the girl seemed to be directing at them, before she let out a low growl. “Put her down.”

The doll raises it's other hand which shoots out and hits Sean right in the face with it's open palm, driving the back of his head into the wall and making him see stars for a moment and not of the magical kind. Just of the possible-concussion sort. At the same time it takes a couple lurching steps forward and shoves Archaea into Stephanie. The girl tries to push back but her hand ends up on Stephanie's shoulder regardless.

The werewolf immediately feels her body lurch and twist, sprouting clawed fingers that intertwine with Archaea's all the while her shoulder swells with erratically growing muscles and fur. A horn or large gnarled fingernail pushes out of her skin and she can feel the random growth spread inward as well as biological material almost randomly surges.

"I'm sorry! Oh god, I'm so sorry!"

A bunch of people in the dorms were about to be upset as the concussion causing blow caused Sean to discharge magical energy in a wild uncontrolled fashion. Some electronics destroyed themselves, plush animals temporarily animated, and other sundry reality warping phenomena happened nearby.

"Bloody blooming bollocks," Sean said as the world blurred and then refocused. He wasn't entirely sure things were right even when they snapped back into focus given how Stephanie was changing shape. He began gathering energy again in a not so controlled fashion causing it to crackled around him.

Will, on the other hand, backed up, taking a position behind Sean. If this...thing got through, he'd have to be the last line of defense.

Stephanie let out a roar of pain and she doubled over as strange growths sprouted all across and within her body. She slashed wildly with he claws as she thrashed in agony on the ground, equally likely to hit friend or foe.

Sean's vision might unblur but what he sees is mostly the smooth metal of the hand still grabbing on to his face, fingers beginning to painfully dig into his skull even as the thing advances down the hall, cable trailing between the arm it left behind and the rest of it. It simply ignores the thrashing Stephanie, her claws just bouncing off of it's armored exterior.

Sean was in pain and so he hissed out a spell that made the air seem to curdle. He grabbed the arm gripping his face with both hands and channeled a spell that manipulate the energy of entropy into it. A spell designed to unmake things, in this case the hand and arm holding his face.

It's hard to concentrate and the magical energies buck and twist and coalesce chaotically as a drop of blood begins to run down the side of Sean's face. But suddenly the pressure stops as the twisting energies wrap around the cable connecting the arm to the rest of the thing and it snaps, severing it and the arm going limb.

The thing itself turns it's head back for a moment, considering. Then it seems to declare the loss of it's arm acceptable. It throws the poor Archaea on top of Stephanie and breaks into a run down the corridor where Will is lurking.

"Fuck!" Archaea screams out as she lands on to of the threshing werewolf, managing to catch herself with one hand braced against the floor right next to Stephanie's head and the other against the wall, staring at the snarling werewolf as she desperately tries not to move. She can feel her power licking out over the hairs that brush against her hand, crackling as it tries to latch on to the biological material but finding it just 'dead' enough to not propagate.

"P-please don't move... please..." she tries to tell the threshing werewolf.

Manikin wrote:It's hard to concentrate and the magical energies buck and twist and coalesce chaotically as a drop of blood begins to run down the side of Sean's face. But suddenly the pressure stops as the twisting energies wrap around the cable connecting the arm to the rest of the thing and it snaps, severing it and the arm going limb..

Sean pulls the hand off not really improving the situation for his face. Between the bleeding and the likely concussion he looks a bit wobbly.

"Going to turn you into a newt...a fried newt you piece of junk," Sean threatened quietly. He starts to gather energy again and feels it ebb and flow poorly making the spell rather... messy. Not seeing Will on the other side of the figure he turns and launches the 'messy' lightning bolt at Manikin.

Despite being wobbly the bolt is on target. At least until the thing seems to notice and instead of attempting to dodge it's torso separates into two right down the middle and it falls away to the left and right, right arm effectively becoming an additional leg while the left side is left dangling. The bolt jaggedly flies over it and hits Will instead. The light of the magical projectile reflects off of the 'inside' of the two halves, clearly showing clear panes behind which organs are twitching, nestled into the four segments that make up the torso. Pressed up against the side of one is an eyeball that twitches back and forth before settling on Sean. Then the whole assembly is pulled back together, the torso joining back into one and sealing the person inside - or what is left of them - back in their protective outer shell.

Will had braced herself to try to body-slam Mannikin.

She had not braced herself for a lightning bolt out of the blue, and slammed into the back wall of the corridor, twitching and spasming through different shapes rapidly.

"Oh, bollocks," Sean said seeing the lightning bolt go through Manikin and hitting Will. Though it also conveyed his reaction to seeing Manikin's inner workings. He couldn't think straight enough to cast something complicated to hold or attack Manikin and instead tried to protect the downed Will with a barrier spell.

Without sparing any of them another glance, Manikin moves down the hall with it's strange gait and throws itself through the window at the end of the hallway.