A Guest from the Prehistoric Era

[Narrator]

At approximately 6:22 PM, a loud, window-shaking growl could be heard, echoing down the hallway of the dorms. Not a howl, mind you -- in a dorm filled with werewolves, that had come to be expected by most people. Any wolves around would probably feel their hackles raised, however, as the noise echoed around the hallway.

[Nailah Weaver]

Within moments Nailah is on her feet, adrenaline pumping as she throws her door open, wearing nothing but a oversized t-shirt and brandishing her riot baton.

[Narrator]

The hallway appeared to be empty except for the half-clad crimefighter -- but the growl was around the corner, and getting louder, as if it was barreling down the hallway in her general direction...

[Tereza Rozanov]

Tereza's head pokes out of the Pack's room, eyes gold but sleepy as she tries to assess the situation from whatever remnants of sleep she's still in.

[Nailah Weaver]

"This one of your doggos?" Nailah asks Tereza when she pops her head into the hallway, glancing over for a moment before focusing on the hallway and the approaching growl again.

[Tereza Rozanov]

"Doesn't sound like one," Tereza says, stepping out into the hallway in shorts and a t-shirt that look like they just barely made it on before the door opened.

[Narrator]

One more growl, and then the sound of racing footsteps.

Tereza could smell it first -- the smell of something wild and feline, coming in their direction.

Nailah could sense it first -- a quick flash of a blonde girl with an Australian accent, crying bloody murder.


Either way, the next thing they both saw was a massive sabertooth tiger rounding the corner, charging in their direction at maximum speed!

[Nailah Weaver]

Nailah blinks, her impression of a blonde girl not meshing with what actually rounds the corner. Stepping back into her room would be the easiest, safest option, so of course instead she steps fully into the hallway to face down the charging tiger, holding the baton in front of herself with both hands. At the last moment she thrusts the baton forward to try and block the thing's giant teeth from ripping into her as she jumps in an attempt to flip onto it's back.

[Narrator]

Nailah's baton briefly encounters some resistance -- and then seems to push right through the tiger. Not like as if it wasn't there; it wasn't like cutting through air. Rather, it was like the baton was going through some Jell-o, or gravy, or some other sort of viscous fluid. The tiger was both there and not there, simultaneously.

Needless to say, jumping to land on it's back did not work particularly well, as the tiger kept going down the hall...

...Or rather, that's what it started to do. A few steps after it passed Nailah, and after the baton had passed through it, it stopped, and sniffed the air in confusion.

[Nailah Weaver]

Nailah goes tumbling to the ground like she's missed a step on the stairs, landing on her back with a thud.

"What the what? Ghost tiger?"

[Tereza Rozanov]

Big predator.

I see that.

Change?

Not yet.

Tereza steps forward, ice appearing in her hands, "Okay, kitty, let's just calm it down here."

[Narrator]

The tiger shook it's head -- in response? To clear it? -- and bounded down the hallway again, this time away from Nailah and Tereza.

[Samantha McManus]

"Did you see what it was?" Sam asks Tereza, ducking her head out.

[Tereza Rozanov]

"Come on," Tereza says, chasing after it. "Can't have that thing running loose." Almost as an afterthought to Sam, she says over her shoulder, "Big stone age cat."

[Narrator]

The cat ran around the corner, and stopped roughly between two doors. It reared up on it's hind legs and started smashing at that space, yowling at it.

[Nailah Weaver]

"Big stone age ghost cat!" Nailah says as she pulls herself up from the floor and hurries to where the cat is trying to claw it's way into one of the dorm rooms.

"Hey! Giant kittie! Over here!" she shouts, waving her baton around as if she was trying to get a dog's attention.

[Narrator]

If the cat heard Nailah, it made no immediate sign -- and then, shortly thereafter, it seemed to go halfway through the wall, as if someone had opened a non-existent door.

The growling was, then, matched with quite a bit of shouting and yelling from inside the wall.

[Ainsley Green]

Ainsley heard commotion, and something about a giant kitty.

Kitties were his favourite, so he became naturally curious and wandered out into the hallway to see what was up.

[Samantha McManus]

"Ghosts. Why does it always have to be ghosts?" Sam grumbles, similarly in pajamas like most present as she heads for the commotion.

[Tereza Rozanov]

Tereza stops, really confused by the goings on. "What the hell?"

[Narrator]

The telepathic presence Sam would be getting was...muddled, somewhat. Not as crisp as it should have been from something standing right in front of her, even if it was half sticking into the wall at this point.

The cat didn't feel like an animal, though -- it was too complex for that. And it felt like one...two...four? People inside the wall. It was hard to get a real firm grip on anything.

A bolt of electricity seemed to come flying out of the wall, blasting the wall behind it, and anyone unfortunate to be standing in the way.


"What the FUCK?"

"Dude, get the fuck out of here! Get security or something!"

[Nailah Weaver]

"Whoa!" Nailah shouts a millisecond before the bolt of electricity arcs out and she narrowly avoids getting blasted.

"What the frick? Now it's farting lighting-bolts?"

[Samantha McManus]

"This doesn't feel... right. It's not just an animal."

[Tereza Rozanov]

"Well, whoever's in there, back off!" Tereza says as she tosses a couple of ice blasts at the wall where the lightning bolt came from.

[Nailah Weaver]

"I mean, it's clearly not. It's stuck halfway in a wall for starters. Hey, you!" Nailah shouts and swings her baton at the tiger's butt.

[Narrator]

"Well, whoever's in there, back off!" Tereza says as she tosses a couple of ice blasts at the wall where the lightning bolt came from.

Tereza's ice blasts...passed straight through the wall!

"Sssstoooop!""Noooo atttaaack." an oddly-pitched, drawn-out, squawking voice came back, just on the feint edge of hearing.

"I mean, it's clearly not. It's stuck halfway in a wall for starters. Hey, you!" Nailah shouts and swings her baton at the tiger's butt.

Nailah's swing, again, went through the sabretooth. It yowled out in surprise and anger once again, and came out from the wall, barreling back down the corridor towards the end of the hallway. In addition to some frostbite -- from Tereza? -- the cat was also more than a bit scorched -- from the electric bolt?

[Nailah Weaver]

"How's that..." Nailah blinks at the ice passing through the wall and decides the obvious thing to do after the giant sabretooth tiger vacates it is to stick her head through the permeable wall herself.

[Narrator]

There shouldn't be anything behind this wall. It should back up against some of the innards of the buliding -- wiring and plumbing, and things like that. So when Nailah's head passes through the wall, this is a bit of a shock.

Of all the things that should be behind the wall, however, another, slightly differently laid out dorm room was probably not what Nailah was expecting. And even if she had been expecting that, the people in the room were not anyone she had ever seen before:

• On the ground was a boy in his boxers, bleeding from the shoulder from two deep puncture wounds. His cybernetic parts were flashing as they tried to compensate for the damage.
• Standing over him was a short blonde girl, fretting and shouting. She wasn't wearing any clothes at the moment.
• Across from them was a dark blue-skinned boy wearing a scruffy paired of jeans and a t-shirt. His skin had silvery streaks, like frost-patterns, surfacing as he stared back and forth between the other two
• In another corner of the room, an unkempt-looking skinny blonde girl was sucking on a frostbitten finger as she studied the scene dispassionately.

Most notably, there didn't seem to be a wall on this side of the wall, if that made sense -- looking down, it was as if her head had just popped into existence; there was nothing there for her to have actually gone through. Like a one-way mirror, except, you know, made of plaster.

The unkempt girl was the only one who noticed Nailah at first, and she opened her mouth as if to say something...

...and then it all seemed to vanish, and Nailah found herself back in the familiar corridor, with her face pressed up against the wall.

The tiger, too, had seemed to vanish at about the same time, with one last growl echoing out and fading.

[Nailah Weaver]

For a moment Nailah just stands there with her face pressed against the wall. Then she turns around with a red face and announces awkwardly. "There's a naked girl in that wall. And a robot-boy?"

[Samantha McManus]

"...when did you get peeping powers?"

[Nailah Weaver]

"What? No, I didn't... the wall's not solid!" she says, putting her palm against the now-solid-again wall. "Uh..."

[Tereza Rozanov]

Tereza, who looks like she'd just been considering charging through the wall, frowns, adrenaline still pumping. "So what the hell was that?"

[Samantha McManus]

"It felt like a person."

"Actually... it felt like a few people."

[Nailah Weaver]

"Well yeah, they were through this wall here."

[Tereza Rozanov]

"We should report this... and make sure this big cat was the only thing running around."

[Samantha McManus]

"I don't feel anything over there now."

"Or anyone I should say."

[Tereza Rozanov]

"Okay then. Let's do what needs doing. You two check on people, make sure our ghostly visitor didn't actually hurt anyone. I'll head out to the Point and see if the Headmistress noticed anything or has any more information," Tereza says as she starts stripping to shift without thinking about where exactly she is.

[Nailah Weaver]

Nailah spins back around to awkwardly look at the wall.

"What's with everyone getting naked today?"

[Samantha McManus]

"It's ah... a bit casual in our room," Sam hedges, rapping on doors and starting to check on people.

[Tereza Rozanov]

"And I don't want to lose the t-shirt," Tereza says before she starts changing, taking off down the hall as she does so.