[INDENT][INDENT][I][color=gray]Coop woke up to darkness, and that darkness was wet. He pulled himself up, his head throbbed, his arms ached, and his eyes felt like they were filled with needles. He placed his hand on his brow to try to shield his vision from the water and winced as pain rocketed through his temple and down his spine. He touched his head some more, unsure what was going on, but the pain forced his fingers to stop probing. The weird indentation in his skin, along with slugs crawling along his head, was enough to know that something was wrong. Wait. His hand shot up to grab the slugs off of his face only to yelp in pain. It was his hair. He'd yanked on his hair. His [i]very[/i] wet hair. A few breaths later, he tried to swat the water away from his face again. Nothing seemed to help, and it was too dark to tell where it came from.

A discordant thrum of voices and screams graced his ears but they pelted off of the sides and tumbled away from him. He tried to grab at the words, but they were too slippery. His fingers ended up in the mud underneath them. He became aware of how wet his pants were. He hoped he was in a puddle. Slowly he stood, wobbling all the while. His body seemed heavier on one side which sent him careening into a tree. Another violent knock rocked his system. It was enough pain to cut through the muted confusion. He pushed himself fully erect and looked around. There were figures around. None of their faces looked familiar. Wait. Was that Julia? Where was he? LA wasn’t known to have these rainstorms. He approached her, placing his hand on her shoulder. His hand was wet, but it was a different wet than her shoulder. She whipped around and looked at him. Words left her lips, and her face wasn’t that of Julia’s anymore. Then there was screaming. People’s attention turned towards something else.

Coop said something. What was it? He didn’t know. But it was enough for him to inhale some of the wet. It was salty and tangy. He smacked his lips, trying to figure it out. It wasn't viscous enough to be BBQ sauce. He rubbed his hand over his lips, but wherever the water was coming from washed the sauce away from his hand in an instant. Coop needed to find whoever was doing this and make them stop.

He stumbled forward, bumping into what felt like people. Yet, they didn’t really react to it. To be fair, there was a lot of bumping. A flash of light and he jerked away from it. It hurt so much. The insides of his brain felt as if they’d been forcefully restarted. He took a step forward, his foot caught on a rock, and he tumbled to the ground. He actually tumbled for a while until he found someone else on the ground, he reached out towards them—needing help getting up. Yet, when he grabbed the hand in front of him, it slid forward without any weight. That’s when Coop realized it wasn’t attached to anyone or anything. The sawed-off end looked like pulled pork. Was that why he was covered in barbeque sauce? Yet, the more he looked at it, the more he realized it was an arm—someone had lost an arm. It’d been removed from their body. And the barbeque sauce was blood. Not only the arm's blood but maybe his blood too? He immediately threw up. [/color][/I][/INDENT][/INDENT]
[COLOR=GRAY][hr][CENTER][img]https://i.imgur.com/v71QiBN.png[/img][/CENTER][indent][sub][COLOR=#B7EB6F][B]Location:[/B][/COLOR] [I]Pacific Royal Collegiate & University - Southern Plateau, Dundas Island[/I][/sub][sup][right][COLOR=#B7EB6F][b]First Class: # 2.11:[/b][/COLOR] [I]Press 'F' to Pay Respects[/I][/right][/sup][/indent][sub][hr][/sub][INDENT][sub][color=#B7EB6F][B]Interaction(s):[/B][/COLOR] [I]Calliope [@PatientBean][/I][/sub][SUP][RIGHT][COLOR=#B7EB6F][b]Previously:[/b][/COLOR] [I]Welcome to Boundary Town, Pop. 0[/I][/right][/SUP]
[INDENT]Coop was told by—someone—that he’d taken a nasty hit to the head and had gotten a concussion. In all the insanity, the others didn’t notice. The girl he accidentally called Julia had found him shortly after he’d wandered away. He'd passed out in his own puke. He was very lucky to be alive with minimal swelling. There was a nasty laceration across his temple, but it was healing quickly enough. Apparently, it’d been caused by his proximity to the top of a tent being ripped off. One of the supports had caught him in the head, and the sheer force of it knocked him unconscious. He was asked what he was doing outside his tent at that time, but Coop didn’t remember. Maybe he was heading to the bathroom. That wasn’t such a stretch?

His stay at the infirmary wasn’t long, especially not as long as one of the other students. Someone that had been tossed into the air by the figure called Hyperion. The one that caused this entire mess. Coop had heard that name. It was a boogeyman that was used by all sides of the media to stoke the flames of the hyper-human and human conflict. Hey. Just because he enjoyed the more lucrative side of social media, didn’t mean that he ignored any and all news. If anything, he had his ear closer to the pulse of it all. Yet, it all paled in comparison to learning that one of the other students passed away. Coop didn’t know him, not that that mattered. Coop barely knew the other students on the Firebird team.

He hung off to the side of the funeral, using the attention that was elsewhere to type out a quick tweet. [COLOR=#B7EB6F][i]“Still camping in Canada, and it’s gorgeous here. You know their beaches are colder than Cali’s?”[/i][/color] Followed by, [COLOR=#B7EB6F][i]“Saw a Viking funeral today. The guy who died was apparently a hero. Don’t worry, fam, he passed in his sleep at a super old age.”[/i][/color] Coop wasn’t there to compromise the school, but he couldn’t [i]not[/i] talk about the on-fire corpse that had sailed off into the water. It was cool as shit. He’d wanted to end it with a selfie, but he still had butterfly bandages keeping the cut on his head together, along with mottled yellows, greens, and purples across that side of his face from the impact. Coop was smart enough to know that would alert someone. 

He made his way back to the campus, not really wanting to linger by the shore. The smoke would probably make its way over there quickly enough, and he didn't really want to inhale “person smoke.” He spotted a small gathering of people to the side, a girl in a wheelchair, a walking/talking statue, and one handsome-looking bro. His eyes then focused past them to someone that looked familiar—very familiar. It wasn’t Julia. No. That’d been the concussion talking. It was Calliope de Leon. Her dad knew his dad, and they’d unfortunately been crammed next to each other on more than one occasion at the kid’s table. It’d been a few years since he’d seen her, and damn—she’d gotten hot. Coop’s forehead winged in pain. Right. Right. Everyone was grieving. No time to admire an old friend. But… it was a fine time to say, “hello.” If he remembered correctly, her being here would have definitely pissed off her dad. They had that in common—at least.

[COLOR=#B7EB6F]“Calli!”[/color] Coop yelled and held up an arm. He jogged over to her, each time his heel collided with the ground, he could feel it in his temple. It hurt, but it was negligible. [COLOR=#B7EB6F]“Calliope de’Leon, what the hell are you doing here?”[/color] As he reached her proximity, he held his arms out like he was ready to hug her, but he didn’t want to do so without her consent on the matter. It was a weird time for everyone. Previously agreed-upon social cues were up in the air. And maybe Coop was a little tactless, but he wasn't without his charm.[/INDENT][/INDENT][/COLOR][hr]