The Alphabet Superset: Week 17: Quest

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    Even a magical school takes time to reopen after a kaiju appears in the sky and causes chaos. Staff needed evaluation, investigations needed to be done, injuries needed to be tended to. Magic speeds things up, but it still took weeks for the school to return to normal.

    In that time, the Scrawler had constantly kept in touch with Miguel. The incident had caused the two of the little harm during the chaos. Scrawler had been cut off and shielded and Miguel had been released. After sealing the alleyway, there was little to do but wait for the chaos to pass.

    Scrawler felt indebted to Miguel and Gabrielle. While they constantly reassured him that he was fine, he still spent a lot of time hanging out with them. Debt eventually evolved into friendship, with Scrawler meeting up with them almost daily. By the time school reopened, it felt like they had been friends forever.

    But as Scrawler and his new friends returned to their classes, there was a nagging in the back of their minds. The school was fixed. The entity was slain. Barrymore was arrested. But they wondered if anyone had gone to deal with the symbols hidden all over campus

    The trio had decided to return to the alleyway where they fought on the night of the incident. The ice that Miguel used to trap Scrawler had mostly melted by now, with only a small mound remaining. The only other blemish in the alleyway was the summoning eye painted on the wall. All three looked at with disgust for a moment.

    "Do you ever think of the others?" Scrawler asked as he stared at the symbol.

    "Yeah, but I couldn't do anything about it. They were enthralled up until everything went down. Then the school was closed. Your the only one I could keep in touch with. Why?" Miguel approached the symbol. He had brought some paint thinner and other painting supplies with him from home. But before he could do anything, he felt a hand on his shoulder.

    "Wait, I want to do something."

    "We have to get rid of this symbol. Who knows when someone will try this again."

    "No, we just have to make it where no one can use it again." Miguel took a step back as Scrawler stepped forward. He took out one of the smaller paint brushes and began to paint around the symbol.

    "What are you thinking?" Gabriella asked curiously, watching her companion work. Scrawler was filling in the blank spaces of the eye with white paint in an effort to make the eye look more normal.

    "When I was first taught how to write, my teacher used to complain that I was writing too quickly and it made my hand writing look sloppy. She always used the same word to describe it. Scrawling." As he talks, The Scrawler begins adding eye lashes to the eye.

    "As I learned to do magic, I learned that writing out the spells became the easiest way to cast. I learned that if I scrawled out the spells, then I could cast faster. So it became a toss up between good handwriting or fast spell casting." The eye lashes become petals of a flower, encircling the symbol.

    "So you started calling yourself the Scrawler?" Miguel asked, leaning against one of the other walls of the alleyway while watching Scrawler work. Scrawler got a smile on his face as he continued working.

    "Yeah, that's not my original name, but at this point, everyone but my parents has to call me that. The ultimate middle finger to that teacher in particular." He painted out a stem from the base of the petal all the way to the bottom of the wall.

    "Are you gonna do this for every symbol?" Gabriella asked as she took up a position beside Miguel, leaning on him while watching Scrawler work. He had taken to adding leaves to the stem. Scrawler paused at the thought, thinking for a moment.

    "You know what, yeah. Lets do it. I am going to track down every single one of the symbols and turn them into a piece of art." Scrawler said excitedly, turning to his friends. Miguel and Gabriella could see that while he was looking at them, his mind was going a hundred miles a hour in another direction.

    "I think you created a monster." Miguel smiled at his girlfriend.

    "Maybe, or maybe I just redirected an existing one." Gabriella said softly, leaning her head against him. Miguel reached an arm around her and squeezed her close.

    "Well, if we're doing this, then we are going to need more colors." Miguel announced, drawing Scrawler back to reality.

    "We?"

    "Yeah. You asked us to help with getting rid of the symbols. Why wouldn't we help out when this just got more fun?"

    The Scrawler smiled. This was going to be fun.