is feeling dead contagious? {OPEN}

[Drew Wallace]

Drew stumbled down the empty hallways of South High School. He felt horrible. The reason behind this is that because the day before a woman was getting mugged on the streets of Gotham. Drew being the person that he is, tried to help the poor woman and save the day. He ended up getting the shit beaten out of him. Then, some other guy swooped in, beat the shit out of the mugger and got the girl. Drew was on the ground for about a half an hor before he decided to get up and go back to the dorms. He was extremely disapointed in himself, he wanted to be a hero, but he just didn't have the strength. That night he had like two nightmares back to back, which prevented him from sleeping. They were both about the Joker, the one person he was truely afraid of. So, it made sense that Drew would feel like complete crap.

He pushed the door open to the school library and headed towards an empty table. Drew plopped down in his seats and dropped his books on the table. It made a louder noise than he had anticipated. "Shhh!!" The librarian whispered seriously at him. He only rolled his eyes, it was a school library, why would they have to be quiet? Drew tapped his fingers for a few moments, he had no idea what he was doing there. But it was better than being in some boring science class. Drew let out a small sigh and took out his notebook and writing an english report that was due the bext week. He didn't know what else to do, so he decided to get the project out of the way.

[nightwing]

Dick was more than relieved that he had ended up with a free period in his schedule but now he was left with the dilemma of how to use that time. Part of him wanted to drag himself back to the dorms and crawl into bed for a few precious minutes of sleep, something he wasn't getting enough of lately, however he couldn't quite bring himself to do that. The thought practically conjured the feeling of the Batman's stern, disapproving gaze No, there was no way he could relax without at least getting something productive done today.

This school had been struck with at least two murders and was packed with a small fortune of oddball characters. Other activities had distracted him so far but maybe it was time to pay attention to things a little closer to home. Dick found himself turning into the library, hands in his pockets as he navigated his way past a few hefty bookshelves.

He caught his bottom lip between his teeth and looked around. The former Boy Wonder really didn't have any inclination to ask the librarian any questions. Besides, she didn't look terribly helpful.

Instead, he settled his gaze on a guy seated at one of the tables. Dick made his way over and leaned over, propping his elbows on top of the table as he whispered quietly to the guy, "Excuse me, do you know if they keep back-issues of the school paper or anything like that in here?"

There was the subtlest tilt of his head in the direction of the librarian as he continued, a small grin crossing his face as he said, "I'd ask the librarian but I get the feeling she's opposed to any sort of sound in the library on general principles."

[Kazza]

Brown hair fell in wild waves around her shoulders and neck as the teenager placed her books on the table in front of her. She was there to study. That had been nearly two hours ago. Since then, Kazza had slumped lower and lower in her chair until she practically vanished from view. She'd told herself that she's just close her eyes for a second, then get onto her psychology project. Unfortunately, one too many late nights had taken their toll upon the girl, and she unintentionally had fallen asleep without anyone noticing.

A sudden slam of books on the desk in front of her startled her awake, and she practically jolted upright. She was just about to start shifting when she remembered where she was, and realised that she wasn't in danger. "Aww, damn it." She muttered quietly, having just glanced down at the watch around her wrist. It was now well into her double Maths lesson, English already gone by. Then she noticed the boy in front of her. He was writing an English essay, reminding Kazza that she, too, had an essay to write, a short story if she remembered correctly. She inwardly groaned.

How much worse can this day get? Actually, I'd rather not think about that... Deciding that the essay wasn't of much interest to her, Kazza yawned, stretched and shoved her books off to the side. After that, she took a few moments to study the newcomer before dragging out a sketchpad and, completely ignoring the fact that she had homework and a class to be at, started to draw. The Australian didn't really think about what she was going to draw, just let her pencil flow across the page, watching an eye come into focus, along with some scales. Next came the shading, intricate little variations of light. By the time she'd started on the snout, she'd practically forgotten about the boy sitting across from her, who now had another boy speaking to him. Kazza looked up for just a second, then went back to her drawing.

[Drew Wallace]

Drew finished his sentence, before making eye contact with the boy. He laughed slightly at his comment. "Yeah, she'd get pissed off if she heard a pin drop," Drew replied, stealing a glance towards the fat librarian. It made him feel better about himself, atleast he didn't have a cruddy job as a cruddy librarian. "Oh, and the school paper should be located in that back corner," he pointed past a couple of book shelves to small bins lined up against the wall. The only reason Drew knew where everything was is because he spends most of his time in the library when there is nothing to do. "I'm Drew, by the way," he said to the guy, he seemed nice enough.

He continued writing his essay, until he looked up and noticed a girl sitting across from him. Had she been there the entire time? Drew examined her for a few moments, she looked really young and she had been drawing something. He contemplated a few seconds on what to say, he normally wasn't one to start up a conversation, but what the hell, he'd rather start a conversation than get the shit beat out of him again. " What are you drawing?" He questioned her, trying to get a look at her sketchpad. Drew gave her a small smile, even though she seemed like a person who wasn't exactly fond of friendliness. As he waited for her to answer him, he continued writing his short story.

[nightwing]

"Thanks," Dick replied. He risked a glance up at the librarian, half-way expecting to find her glaring at them. However, she seemed to be filing something so he felt it was safe to rule out that the unpleasant woman possessed super-hearing, at least. As he turned his attention back he noticed the girl with the sketchpad and had looked up at him only to go back to her drawing. He wondered if the brief conversation had disturbed her from her artistic concentration or if she was simply curious. Glancing back at the guy that had helped him out he offered up a grateful smile and returned the introduction, "Dick Grayson, nice to meet you."

With that, he gave a quick nod of thanks and headed back in the direction he had been given. He bit his bottom lip, letting his eyes play over the labels on the bins deciding to work both ways to the middle. He grabbed a stack from the oldest of the back-issues that were still available and then grabbed some from the newest of the bins. Making sure to keep them separate he decided he'd need a table to sort through all of the pages and since he'd already established contact he went back to the table with Drew and the sketchpad girl. He took a seat that had a little space from either of them so he could set down his collection of newspapers and shrugged off his bag, setting it on the ground next to him.

He then extracted a notepad from his bag and got a pencil, and then picked out a newspaper to read and began scanning over the headlines for anything that looked particularly interesting or out of the ordinary. he glanced up for half a second as he heard Drew ask about what the other girl was drawing, instinctively glancing over himself to see if he could tell from where he was seated. Discovering that he could not, he turned back to the newspaper but continued to listen and see whether she'd show Drew the picture or not.

[Kazza]

The teenager placed her pencil carefully on the desk, and took out a few metallic colours; green, blue, silver, purple. They were for the eye, which she proceeded to colour carefully and being sure not to smudge anything. If it weren't for the boy, she probably would have stayed that way until she'd finished her drawing, which could take hours. "Huh? What am I drawing?" She repeated, the words swirling meaninglessly around her head for a few seconds. "Oh, I'm, uh, Drawing..." She swallowed, preparing herself for how dumb this was about to sound. "A dragon..." She muttered, turning her sketch around to face the two boys. One of them appeared to have been trying to get a glimpse of her picture.

The whole page had been devoted to the head, focused mainly on the eye. Everything so far was shaded in black, white in grey, save for the pupil, which was predominantly blue with flickers of green and silver, followed by a light, glowing purple outline. It was a good drawing, in Kazza's eyes, and it looked realistic. That didn't, however, mean that she was madly keen on showing it to strangers. After half a minute, she turned it back to face her, but didn't feel much like shading more of it.

[Drew Wallace]

Drew studied the drawing that she was holding up towards him, and it appeared that Dick was looking too. He was amazed at how detailed and how realistic it looked. "Wow, that's really something," he spoke, still looking at the drawing before she turned it back towards her. Drew leaned back in his chair and smiled at the girl. "It's really good, like amazingly good," he laughed slightly, "if you hadn't already heard from when I was talking to Dick, I'm Drew." He thought he should introduce himself, since he completely went out of his way and asked her what she was drawing. It would have been rude if he didn't.

Drew stared down at his short story, while waiting if she was going to introduce herself or not. He reread it and rolled his eyes, it sounded like an sixth grader had wrote it. Normally he was good at writing, but it seemed he didn't have enough muse to come up with something good. Maybe I should start over and make my story about a dragon. Drew grinned to himself slightly and scribbled out his old story in his notebook. Not feeling content enough, he tore the paper out of his notebook, crinkled it up into a ball, and made a basketball shot into the trash can. "Three points," He muttered to himself and restarted writing his essay.