this is boo sheet

I've done nothing wrong
Except for all the atrocities

Ludo hadn’t given her any specifics on who to convince their house was haunted. In all honesty, she’d contemplated snagging that poor Hawthorn creature again – because it’d be fucking hilarious – but she figured she could just do it within Torchline too, easy peasy. Plenty to pick from.

Well, in all the whims of her poor impulse control, it was easy.

Initially, she’d opted for a random selection. Namely, someone who had an open window and maybe a few loose shingles on their roof. So she’d turned invisible, scampered along a few homes amidst Haulani, and tested a few with her fingers. When one budged, she smirked, giggling to herself until she realized most spectral dipshits didn’t do such things – and paused, glancing over gutters to see if there’d be an aperture available. A little one, probably to release heat from the home, but enough to eventually wiggle her way in there.

Perfect.

So she started with her initial shithead plan, knocking along the roof, first with her heel, then her toes, only prying the shingle away from its ramparts and kin, as if a good and friendly neighborhood ghost was just showing someone they needed repairs. It might’ve sounded like something had landed and continually jumped on top of the thresholds, but it was a foundational effort.

the honeybee

Besides that
I'm innocent

flew me to places I've never been

Inside Isla’s apartment, Everest is exactly where he planned to be—exactly where he should be. The coffee table is set at a precise forty-five degree angle from the couch, his notebook placed squarely in the centre of it. Next to the notebook, a coaster. On the coaster, a glass of water filled three-quarters of the way. He’s already adjusted the lighting to reduce glare, and the air smells faintly of lemon balm, as per Isla’s diffuser settings. All of it—orderly. Predictable. Which is why the sudden, hollow thud from above shatters him like glass dropped onto tile.

His grip tightens on his pen. He doesn’t move at first. Just blinks.

Thud. Thud.

The pattern is inconsistent. Inorganic. His spine stiffens, head slowly angling upward with the precision of a telescope tracking an unexpected object in the sky. One hand comes up to press flat over his sternum—grounding, habitual. The pen is now resting diagonally across his thigh, forgotten. He swallows. Scrape. Like something lifting. Dislodging.

His whole body flinches—shoulders ratcheting up and fingers twitching at his sides. It’s the kind of sensory disruption he can’t easily file away, and it short-circuits his internal equilibrium. He stims to compensate—pinching the hem of his shirt between thumb and forefinger in tiny, rhythmic pulls.

"This isn’t... wind," he says under his breath. The cadence of the steps is too deliberate. Not a tree branch. Not a storm. "Could be thermal expansion, maybe—shingle movement from heat loss." But even as he says it, his breath is tightening. He draws it in through his nose for four counts, holds it, releases—tries again. It doesn’t help.

Standing now, his movements are overly careful, as though the floor might give out if he steps too hard. He walks to the centre of the room, where he has the clearest view of the ceiling, tilting his head to listen again. The absence of Isla is suddenly very loud. He doesn’t want to call for her. That would imply concern. And he isn’t concerned. He’s… investigating.

He presses his palms against his thighs, flexing them once, twice. His brain is running simulations: squirrels, misaligned gutters, a hel hopping across shingles. But they don’t line up. The rhythm. The force. He takes a step back toward the wall, places both hands against it—another grounding trick—and closes his eyes, counting backward from ten. But even in that count, even as he breathes in sterile, lemon-scented air, Everest knows: something is off. Something is not in the plan. And until he figures out what it is, his entire system will remain on high alert.

but now I'm laying on the cold hard ground

Code 100% taken from the queeeeeeen herself, Sky <3

I've done nothing wrong
Except for all the atrocities

If she weren’t so involved in her own task, Melita might have paused to hear movement, voices, echoing along the threshold she was striving to ‘haunt’. Growing bored of the shingle shifting, she moved on to other portions, lightly tapping across the expanse of the roof as if floating, barely making a peep,

Before dropping to her stomach, and leaning out over the gutters, hands splayed to hasten downward, banging on the wall. She did a few light taps at first, and then escalated them, one right after the other, as if someone was knocking, then smacking the painted sides.

Pausing, she then ambled to another side of the house, and repeated the same gestures, head tilting, waiting to see if there was a response. If not, she had some other motions up her sleeve, but she didn’t want a massive revelation juuuust yet.

the honeybee

Besides that
I'm innocent

flew me to places I've never been

The initial footsteps had faded, just enough for Everest’s nervous system to begin its slow climb down from the cliff edge—until they didn’t.

The first tap against the wall is so light it barely registers. The second makes his head turn. By the third, his hands are flat against his thighs again, pressing hard. It isn’t internal anymore. Not abstract. Not the roof.

It’s the walls.

He flinches so sharply that his shoulder knocks the lamp beside Isla’s couch. It wobbles, but doesn’t fall. He watches it sway with something close to dread, eyes locked on the movement until it stops. Until the rest of him can try to stop.

But outside, the banging doesn’t. It relocates. As if—as if it’s circling. He paces a short, compulsive circuit—two strides to the door, pivot, three back to the middle of the rug. The stimuli are too strong. He needs...he needs to modulate. Something familiar, something controlled. He reaches for his wrist and rubs at the pressure point with his thumb in small, tight circles.

He breathes again. Try to solve it. Categorize the input. Loud, erratic sounds. Location shifting. Patterns irregular. Avian? No. Raccoon? Too rhythmic. Person?

The hypothesis clots in his throat.

What kind of person knocks like that on two separate walls? The angles don’t make sense. There’s no entry noise. No approach. No laughter. No voice saying oops, wrong house. Just—

BANG.

He lurches toward the window, but doesn’t touch it. Just stands beside it, back to the wall, eyes flicking upward, as if that will give him a tactical advantage. He wants to find Isla. He should find Isla.

Instead, he pulls his notebook from his pocket, and begins to write:

Possible intruder? No visual confirmation.
Pattern of knocks = deliberate
No vocalisation
Movement suggests awareness of house layout
Currently unknown motive or method of access

He exhales through his nose—sharp, hot. Glances toward the front door. Then the kitchen. Then the ceiling again. One hand tightens into a fist, the other still flicking along the edge of his shirt hem. Everest has already begun cataloguing every object in the room by potential defensive usefulness, even as his mind whirs like a storm warning beacon—flashing, spiralling, looping.

Something is very, very wrong.

but now I'm laying on the cold hard ground

Code 100% taken from the queeeeeeen herself, Sky <3

I've done nothing wrong
Except for all the atrocities

She waited again, pausing in her current plotting. There were only soft sounds exuding nearby, movement, motion, someone clearly investigating. Drifting downward and peeking into the window – and only halting shortly before remembering he couldn’t see her left her slightly frozen – before deciding on her final divinations.

Quietly and stealthily, she scooted back upwards, and then dove into her pockets. There, clutched in her hands, were three ducks from the latest accidental plunge of chaos magic. One painted in all white, silhouetted by nothing but the shocked expression on its face, another in all majestic greenery, like it should’ve been part of a Fae movement, and the last, a shrouded and ragged looking depiction of what could’ve been a knockoff Ludo.

Taking all three in her grasp, she dangled over the sides again, and when the time was right, launched all three through the opening.

the honeybee

Besides that
I'm innocent

flew me to places I've never been

The ducks land with a series of thuds. Not dramatic—no smashing, no great calamity—but there’s something almost surgical in their arrival, like someone intended them to appear without context. Which, frankly, is much worse. Everest freezes.

The pen in his hand goes rigid. The air between two breaths sharpens into glass. Because the ducks aren’t part of the schema. He didn’t leave the window open wide enough for anything to come in—he measured it. He remembers the precise angle of the hinge. And yet—white. Green. Ragged black. Lined up on the floor like witnesses. Watching.

His first instinct is to try and explain it. A bird? No. The angles don’t make sense. Wind? No, not with this kind of placement. Rationality is supposed to work, but the facts arrange themselves in illogical ways, forming a pattern that isn’t a pattern, which might as well be a scream.

His breathing picks up. Shallow. Fast. Notebook trembling in his hands, he writes:

Objects introduced into interior without physical justification.
Shapes: avian. Paint inconsistent with domestic decor.
No entry sound. No breach. No break.

He can feel the ducks behind him, like gravity’s shifted slightly and they’re the new axis. A frantic edge frays the corners of his mind, but he forces himself not to stim too aggressively, not to rock or claw his own arms. Instead he does what he always does—organizes. He crouches slowly, movements clinical, and with two fingers nudges one duck (the green one) gently to the side, as if expecting it to detonate.

Nothing.

Still, the presence of all three is intolerable. Uncatalogued chaos. So Everest carefully takes the notebook, and with painstaking precision, tears out a blank page, folds it in half, and gently drapes it over the Ludo-esque duck. If it’s going to haunt him, it can at least be polite and cover its face. Then, as if needing to reset the world, he stands. Walks with exact pacing to the kitchen. Pours a glass of water. And stares into the middle distance as he drinks, white-knuckled, pretending this is normal and that he's fine.

but now I'm laying on the cold hard ground

Code 100% taken from the queeeeeeen herself, Sky <3

I've done nothing wrong
Except for all the atrocities

She watched, she waited. Someone stirred beyond the window again, likely taking in the ducks, and it took a modicum of control for her to keep it together. Something to laugh about later, in the comforts of her home. For now, she needed to maintain a semblance of intangibility.

One last show then – when everything fell to notebooks and frantic writing. Cupping her hands together, she leaned out over the side again, only dangling so much as to ensure the voice echoed. “BOOLIEVE IN YOURSELF,” booming from the rafters, made purposefully deep and stark and potent. And maybe motivational? “GOODBYE AND GOOD LUCK.” With what – who knew – but the Honeybee thought she’d done some fine work. Probably some places to add in other modes – room for growth and all that.

Then she rose to scurry away, back down the roof from whence she came.

the honeybee

Besides that
I'm innocent

flew me to places I've never been

The voice booms from nowhere. Not from a person, not from a direction, but from the architecture, and Everest drops the glass. It doesn’t shatter—it lands on a rug, which Isla placed specifically for traction during rainy seasons—but the water sloshes across his shoes, and the sudden wetness nearly undoes him more than the voice.

He jerks back, every muscle locking. “BOOLIEVE IN YOURSELF” echoes in his skull like a glitching radio frequency, not quite threatening, but wrong in the way a smile on a corpse might be. The goodbye feels like a final rite, not encouragement. The notebook is dropped. The duck remains covered. None of this makes sense.

He paces once in a tight, spiralling arc—too fast, shoes squeaking faintly against the floor—and then makes the correct decision: flee.
 
Jacket. Keys. Bag. No hesitation.

He doesn’t even stop to close the window, and the note he scrawls and leaves behind (taped to the counter at an exact 90-degree angle) reads only: UNEXPLAINED EVENT. FLEEING TO VALIDATE WITH WITNESS. IF FOUND DEAD, BLAME DUCK.

And then he’s gone—out the door with precision footfalls, his route toward Isla’s clinic calculated down to the most efficient sequence of turns. Not running. But not not running either.

Just a man on a mission, eyes wide, breath fast, and heart absolutely convinced that either he’s losing his mind—

—or the ducks are planning something.

~FIN

but now I'm laying on the cold hard ground

Code 100% taken from the queeeeeeen herself, Sky <3