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Sammy is with the rest of the band wiating for practice to start when she realizes Heather isn't there yet.  Jessica says she saw her in the locker room right before and assumes she's still there.

"Do you think she's sick?  I'll go take a look and see if she's okay."

Sammy sets down her instrument and walks quickly to the locker room.  As she enters, she calls out "Heather?  Heather?  Are you okay?   You're late for practice."

A quick search of the locker room shows no sign of Heather, but Sammy does find her claronet case and some dead bees.

Sammy grabs the case, and wonders about the bees.  I hope she didn't get stung.  She goes to the gym teachers' office area to see if anybody is there who might know something.  As she passes the boys and the girls lavatories, she opens their respective doors and calls out loudly for Heather.

In the office she finds the gym teacher unconscious on the floor, obviously having been stung a few times.  There are more dead bees here.

OOC: Make a Search Check, DC 18

OOC:  I rolled a 1. D'oh!

Which way did they go, George? Which way did they go? (1d20-17=-16) (http://invisiblecastle.com/find.py?id=674811)

Sammy drops to her knees to see if the teacher is still breathing.  She throws up her force field just in case there are more bees around here.

The teacher is breathing, just unconscious.  Sluggish response to attempts to wake, like she's doped on something.

"Hang on, I'm calling for help."  She looks for the nearest school phone, so she can get a direct connection to the main office.  I sure hope Heather is okay, wherever she is.

You call the office to advise them about what's going on and they say they'll send help right away.

OOC: Notice Check DC 18

OOC:  Blink. Blink. (1d20=6) (http://invisiblecastle.com/find.py?id=674959) plus 2 equals 8.

Sammy, growing more upset, searches frantically for any clue as to Heather's whereabouts.  "Heather?!  HEATHER?!"

Looking around she sees a few more dead bees, they seem to form a trail that leads out of the locker room and stop at the ladder that leads to the roof access.

OOC: This building is seperate from the main school building.

Not wanting to waste any time, if no one is looking, Sammy takes to the air and follows the ladder up to the building roof.  She doesn't care that she really has nothing to disguise her appearance.

Once on the roof the trail of dead bees starts again, heading off towards a warren of air-conditioning equipment.  Sammy can hear a buzzing sound, like a lot of bees.

She doesn't know how well this will work, but she gives it a try.  She focuses on the A/C units, on the ventilation holes, and tries to *PUSH* air in one side and out another, hoping to flush out the bees.

OOC:  Blast 'em! (1d20+2=8) (http://invisiblecastle.com/find.py?id=675099)

Sammy is slightly shocked when something like a thoushand bees emerge from the AC units and form a large cloud in the air above.  She hears Heather scream from just past the line of ACs.

As loud as she can, Sammy shouts out "Heather!  Run!"

Force field still up, she plunges into the cloud of bees, hoping to make them angry enough to chase her instead of Heather.  She hangs there just long enough to get their attention, then starts to fly away, trying to draw them after her.  From her elevated vantage point, she looks for a large body of water.  Barring that, she heads in the direction of the nearest car wash, never going too fast to lose the incensed insects.

OOC:  what are the special effects of the force field?  I see a whirlwind swirling around her, picking up bits of debris.

OOC: That special effect works.  It almost looks like smoke swirling around her from the bits of sand and stuff she would pick up.

Inside the building is the pool, other then that a car wash is the closest place.

Remembering an insect collection she had to put together for a science class in middle school, she knows that liquids have to get into a bugs breathing pores in order for it to drown, and that soapy water works especially well for that.  If she just dives into the pool, they might not follow her down.  The car wash it is!

Like the Pied Piper,  she leads the swarm to the nearby automated car wash, then waits for a car to enter.  With a yell of "Coming through!" she dashes into the heavy downpour of soapy, waxy water and hopes the insects follow.

As Sammy races through the car wash, protected by her force field, the swarm follows her.  She emerges on the other side, looking back to see if any of the bees make it out.  A minute passes, then she sees the carwash stop.  Thousands of dead bees lay everywhere, plugging drains and littering the ground.

Sammy hightails it back to the school to look for Heather, hoping her friend was able to get to somewhere safe.  She flies back to the roof area where she last heard Heather's voice and lands in a spot where she's less likely to be observed.  "Heather?  Can you hear me?  Where are you?"

The sound of soft whimpering can be heard from just the other side of one of the air ducts.  Inside Sammy finds Heather.  She has a few stings, but is physically okay.  "They just swarmed into the locker room."  she says through near tears, "They swarmed all over me and picked me up, then I got stung and the next thing I knew I woke up here.  They were everywhere."  She reaches out and hugs Sammy, finally breaking into sobs.

Sammy puts an arm around her friend's shoulders and says in a soothing voice,  "You're gonna be okay.  Come on, let's see if we can get you down from here.  There's a ladder if you think you can walk.  If you can't, I'll help you, or I'll get help."

Heather and Sammy make their way down the ladder and find several of the campus police, the principal, and some paramedics taking care of the gym teacher.

They help Heather down and the paramedics begin to look to her to see if she's alright.

"I take it you called Ms. Jameson."  The principal said, "Nice work, keeping a cool head in these types of situations really helps."

Sammy smiles with pleased embarrassment and shrugs.  "Heather's my friend.  What else was I supposed to do?  It's not like I was going to leave her out there all alone and needing help."

The paramedics take Heather and the gym teacher to the hospital for observation after they give their statements.

Sammy notices there are still a few dead bees laying around.  Now that she's had a chance to look at them, they seem a bit big to her.

She picks up a bee by its wings to look at it more closely.  If it looks odd enough, she'll pick up a couple of them to see if they are all alike.

They are a bit odd, they all seem to look alike.

She scoops up a couple of them, and finds a soda cup or some other kind of rigid container to hold them without breaking them up into too many pieces of bug.  She's already missed most of band practice, so she takes the cup and goes in search of a biology teacher.  Maybe she can borrow a camera and send a photo of the bee to the Field Museum for identification.

You know of a couple of science teachers that might be able to help.  Mr. Heep is the faculty head for the science club and generally though of as a cool guy to students.  Mr. Hamilton is the other one, he's a bio teacher but not too friendly.  Or so you've heard.

Sammy goes in search of Mr. Heep, toting the bugs with her.  She doesn't have any classes with him, but she's heard about him and he seems both approachable and smart.

When she finds him, she raps on the frame of the door to get his attention.  "Mr. Heep?  Hi.  My name is Samantha Jameson, and I was wondering if you might be able to help me figure out what kind of bees these are?  My friend Heather and a gym teacher just got stung up by these things -- there were thousands of them before they swarmed away.  These are a couple of the dead ones that were laying around the door to the gym.  I'm not sure what they are, are you?  They look wrong somehow, don't you think?"

Mr. Heep invites Sammy into the room and takes a look at the bees she brought.  "Look a litle big to be honey bees."  he says as he looks them over.  He examines one under the microscope for a few minutes, then steps back, "Take a look."  He says.

Sammy looks through the microscope at the insect.  It looks like a bee to her, except for it's size and the fact that it has what look like very long legs.

"You said they attacked some people?"  Mr. Heep asks, looking at the other one with a magnifying glass.  "Let me do a little more in depth analysis to confirm it, but I'd guess these are genetically engineered.  You said there thousands of them?"

"Yes, it seemed like thousands, because they made  a big dark cloud as big as a car.  They were sheltering in some air conditioning units on top of the gym extension, you know, the pool building.  There are -- or at least there were -- a bunch of dead ones in the locker room, and the trail led up the ladder to the roof of the other building.  I went up because I was looking for Heather.  I thought maybe she got scared and was trying to run away and they chased her up the ladder.  That's  where I saw them and found her.  They swarmed and chased after something that was flying by just as I got there, so I'm pretty sure they're gone now.  The school might want to call exterminators just in case.  They seemed really mean.  If we hurry, we can get more, if you want them; the janitors might not have had a chance yet to clean them up.  I bet they won't even touch the roof, since its out of sight and all.  I could only fit so many in this cup without breaking them up into pieces." 

She pauses for breath.

"Genetically engineered?  Like the corn the Greenies were protesting about on TV the other day?  Wow.  Do you think we ought to tell the hospital, in case normal bee sting medicine doesn't work?"

"I'll call the principal, he can call the hospital.  I just need to spend a little time with them, see if I can find out anything useful."  He sits back down and begins to prepare some tools.  "Come see me tomorrow, I should have some answers by then."